


Force of Nature

by ChipTheKeeper



Series: Forces at Work [2]
Category: Star Wars: Jedi: Fallen Order (Video Game), The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Backstory, Crossover, F/F, Fluff, Sequel, Shenanigans
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-15
Updated: 2021-02-04
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:46:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 23,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26470585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChipTheKeeper/pseuds/ChipTheKeeper
Summary: New adventures in Jedi-ing for Sam, Cara, Cal and the crew after the Gideon affair.(Please make sure to read this AFTER Force of Habit!)
Relationships: Cara Dune/Original Character(s), Cara Dune/Original Female Character(s)
Series: Forces at Work [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1924345
Comments: 9
Kudos: 12





	1. Dash

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam and Cara make an unexpected discovery on a trip to New Alderaan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Seriously, don't go reading this before the full part 1 story. It will not make much sense.
> 
> Anyway. I don't really know what this is going to be exactly, don't have a real plan for a new story. I just have bits and pieces that I want to get out as a follow-up so that's probably all it's going to be. Or maybe not? Who knows? Either way, hope y'all enjoy.

Sam Cardell couldn’t contain a smile as she entered her bunk room on the _Mantis_ and saw her partner sitting up in their bed, her datapad playing some apparently entertaining holovid. The silver-haired Jedi sat down directly in front of her and, when the other woman didn’t look up, lifted her chin to kiss her sweetly.

“Happy anniversary.”

“Anniversary of what?” asked Cara Dune, completely oblivious as to why her partner was in such a good mood.

Sam cocked her head as if trying to gauge whether or not she was being messed with.

“Of...us,” she said, only to get a blank stare back from Cara. “What, did you forget?”

“No, I didn’t forget,” Cara said. She did, but Sam didn’t need to know that. “It’s more a matter of...I never knew...the date.”

The former shock trooper made a sorry attempt at an innocent grin, but the Jedi wasn’t buying it.

“You forgot. You forgot we’ve been together again for a year.”

“I did not, it’s just...time flies when you’re having so much fun.”

Sam shook her head. “You know I can read your mind, right?”

Ironically, Cara _had_ momentarily forgotten about that particular skill her partner possessed. Sam didn’t often use her telepathic powers on her, and never without permission, but her point stood. Cara was caught and she knew it.

She plastered on a big, fraudulent smile and held her arms out wide. “Happy anniversary baby!”

Sam rolled her eyes, trying not to be swayed by how adorable she found the display. “Whatever, just open your present.”

She pulled a box out from behind her back and tossed it on the bed between them. Cara raised an eyebrow at her before picking up the box and carefully lifting the lid off the top. Inside was a blaster pistol, a DL-44 heavy model with a modified scope and handle.

“Woah, where did you get this?” Cara asked, admiring the weapon as she took it reverently from the box. She had plenty of weapons to her name already, and far more pistols than she had hands for, but none of them were quite so beautiful.

“It’s Cal’s, I stole it,” Sam said casually. Cara looked up at her with a surprised expression. “What? He never uses it.”

The former shock trooper’s look of surprise gave way to a sultry smirk as she set the weapon down on a table beside them and pulled Sam to her by the fabric of her vest.

“I have never loved you more than I love you right now,” she said, whispering in the Jedi’s ear.

“Oh--” was all Sam could get out before Cara connected their mouths in a passionate kiss. Nothing turned her partner on like guns and theft, apparently. Eventually her brain caught up enough to kiss her back and before long their lips and hands were exploring every bit of each other they could possibly find. Cara pushed her gently backward to lay down and covered her body with her own. Suddenly she looked up from her studious work of kissing Sam’s neck and looked at her seriously.

“What?” the Jedi asked breathlessly.

“I didn’t get you anything,” the dark-haired woman confessed, and Sam laughed.

“Just keep doin’ what you’re doing and we’ll call it even,” she said.

But by the time they were done, Sam felt as if she was the one who owed Cara after all.

~

Sam expected much more resistance when she asked her master the next day if she and Cara could take a little time away from the crew, but Cal approved quickly once she told him they wanted to visit the colony of New Alderaan. The harder part, surprisingly, had been convincing the Mandalorian that they would not need him to go along for “extra protection.”

As survivors of the planet that had been destroyed more than a decade earlier by the ruthless Empire, the two of them felt called to the place many of their fellow displaced Alderaanians were now calling home. There was no real expectation that they would find anyone there that they’d known, no reason to believe that going would heal any of the years of pain they’d endured. But there was always the possibility of finding something unexpected. They had both believed the other was gone for years, after all, only to find each other again by pure chance.

The Jedi felt almost regretful the moment they touched down on the small moon that the colony had been settled on. She was fairly good at keeping the thoughts and emotions of others from overwhelming her despite her heightened powers of telepathy, but being surrounded by so many people who shared her pain was almost too much to handle. Sam felt all of it at once as she and Cara stepped off the shuttle that brought them, piercing her chest like a bolt from a blaster. She hadn’t felt a pain like that since the day Alderaan had been destroyed, not even when she had actually been shot.

The pain -- and Cara’s concern over it -- eventually ebbed over the first couple of days they spent in the colony though, and before long they found it comforting to be around so many other survivors. They spent the days rather aimlessly, exploring whatever they happened to find most interesting in the small city that had taken shape and having leisurely conversations with citizens everywhere they went. In almost every conversation the topics revolved around the same two questions -- where were you from on the planet, and where were you when it was lost. Sam was less forthcoming than most on the latter question, but the answer to the first nearly always made up for it. Several people they met even told her they’d eaten at her mother’s restaurant in Crevasse City at least once. The Jedi found it hard to keep tears from her eyes when that happened.

It wasn’t until the end of the first standard week there that they met the boy.

They were out for a walk in the early evening, appreciating the colors of the sky as the sun began to set and planning to eventually stop somewhere for dinner. Cara had an arm around Sam’s waist and Sam had one around Cara’s shoulders. Recruiting members to the new Jedi Order was the furthest thing from the tall Alderaanian’s mind. Until an all too familiar rushing sound played between her ears.

Sam stopped in her tracks and whirled around, looking for the source of whatever message the Force was trying to send her. When her eyes landed on a trio of people walking toward them, she knew instantly what it was trying to say. The skinny, dark-haired boy walked between two people, presumably his parents, and Sam felt instinctively that he was like her. He was strong with the Force.

“What’s wrong?” Cara asked once she realized Sam seemed to be stuck in place on the sidewalk.

The Jedi turned to her with half a grin. “Got one.”

“Got one? Here?” Their crew had been traveling as seekers for the new Order long enough that Cara knew the code for when Sam detected another Force-sensitive individual. She just didn’t expect it to happen on this particular trip.

Sam nodded ahead at the little family in the distance. “The kid.”

“Should we call Cere?”

The eldest Jedi of the _Mantis_ crew was usually the one to handle the next step in this process, the speaking to the family part. But there wasn’t exactly time for her to get there. And something told Sam she needed to be the one to handle it this time anyway.

“No. I’ll talk to them.”

As the family approached, they tried to make themselves look as un-intimidating as possible, a task far more difficult for Cara than for her lanky counterpart. Sam put on a friendly smile and stepped in front of the trio.

“Hi. I’m sorry to bother you all, but...well there’s no way to say this that doesn’t sound strange,” she said, realizing she should have paid better attention to how Cere had always done it, “I believe your son may be a Jedi. I mean...he could be, with training, but he’s definitely strong with the For--”

Cara stepped in to help, clocking the mildly horrified faces of the boy’s parents. “I think what my partner here is trying to say is, if you don’t mind, we’d like to speak to you about the Jedi Order.”

The diplomatic approach helped erase the nervous looks that the sudden confrontation by a complete stranger had caused, but the family all still looked quite confused.

“So, you’re...Jedi?” the man asked. “I didn’t think those existed anymore.”

“I am,” Sam confirmed. “There aren’t many of us, but we still exist. And I can sense that your boy here is....he’s like me.”

She reached behind her back and unclipped her lightsaber from her belt. She held it in front of her, the shiny silver hilt laying across both palms as she presented it to the boy. His eyes widened with excited curiosity at the strange object but she could sense that he had no idea what it was.

“That’s a real lightsaber...” the woman said, awe apparent in her voice.

“It is,” Sam said, then turned her attention back to the parents. “Is there somewhere we can talk?”

The adults hesitated for only a moment before introducing themselves -- "I'm Wayde, this is my wife, Marlee" -- and leading them into a quiet little diner down the block. The five of them sat and spoke over a light meal, all too nervous to eat much save for the boy himself. Sam and Cara explained who they were and what they did and that they weren’t even in the city on the job. Upon the revelation that they were survivors themselves, the other couple seemed to relax more. They prompted the boy to introduce himself and he quietly told them his name was Dash.

Sam smiled kindly at him. “Hey Dash. I’m Sam. I think we have a lot in common.” He didn’t respond so she continued. “You know when I was little, something weird happened to me sometimes. When I was really scared or mad I would hear a funny sound in my ears, like it sounds if you go underwater, and then sometimes stuff near me would just fly across the room even if I didn’t touch it. Has anything like that ever happened to you?”

Dash’s parents shared a knowing look and the boy seemed to ponder the question for a moment before nodding.

“One time I was having a really scary dream, and then I woke up and my lamp was broken on the floor. But I know I didn’t hit it,” he reported.

The silver-haired Jedi nodded understandingly. “You probably used the Force to try to protect yourself from whatever had scared you. Your lamp just got in the way.”

“But I don’t even know what the Force is, though,” the kid said. “How can I do it if I don’t know what it is?”

“Well, sometimes Jedi can even use it without really knowing how in certain situations. But the people I work with can teach you how to use it for real, like they taught me.”

As a demonstration, Sam pointed to the boy’s glass of water, then called on the Force to lift it off the table and into her hand. Dash’s eyes grew huge as he watched her take a sip.

“You’ll teach me how to do _that_?” he asked excitedly and Sam laughed.

“That, and many other things,” she said, then looked to his parents. “Much more important things.”

With occasional input from Cara, Sam explained what the boy could expect to learn from his potential Jedi training. She didn’t downplay anything, telling them honestly that there were always risks involved with joining the Order, even in the post-Empire era. But with Luke Skywalker setting up the new temple on a secret, secluded planet and warriors like Cara and Mando always looking out for the _Mantis_ crew, most of those risks were far from coming to fruition.

Some time after he grew bored of the conversation, Dash sat up excitedly, spotting one of his friends across the diner. The other child called for him to come over and his parents approved, leaving the four adults to speak alone for a while.

“I grew up hearing stories about the Jedi,” Marlee said tentatively. “Not just the heroic tales, but stories of children going off with these strangers and never coming home. Dash is....all we have. We’re all he has. I know he seems excited about this, but...I don’t think we could just let him go and never see him again.”

“I understand,” Sam said. She’d sensed as much from the mother and expected the subject to come up eventually. It always did. “I was much older than he is when I was first told what I was, and even for me it was terrifying to leave my home and my family. My crew eventually became my new family, but it didn’t make losing my real one any easier. My master and our mentor, they were children like you heard about. They don’t even remember their parents. None of us want that for any of the younglings we train. We’re doing things differently now. If Dash were to choose to come with us, you’d still be able to talk to him. We’d bring him back to visit. It would just be like he’s....away at boarding school in Aldera.”

The parents smiled at Sam’s metaphoric reference to their homeworld’s capital city, where the best and brightest students often went to learn from the planet’s best and brightest teachers.

“He wouldn’t even understand that reference,” Wayde said with the familiar air of sadness that found its way into so many conversations between surviving Alderaanians.

“If you don’t mind me asking, was he born here?” Cara inquired. She guessed that Dash was probably around nine years old, not old enough to have ever seen Alderaan.

But his mother shook her head. “No. He’s small for his age,” she said, assuming correctly that Cara had underestimated him. “He was just a few months old when we left to visit friends on Hosnian Prime. We never did get back...”

Sam felt the piercing sensation in her chest again as her own grief was multiplied by four. She watched Wayde take his wife’s hand to comfort her, and felt Cara do the same to her own under the table.

“He wasn’t born here but it’s the only home he’s ever known,” the father said of his son, lifting his eyes to look at the boy a few tables away. “It’s where all his friends are, where he’s happy.”

“Which is why this is ultimately his choice,” Sam said. “I can make all the promises to you right now -- that we’ll take care of him like he’s our own, that we’ll teach him everything we can about Alderaan and about how to help people in need, that he’ll have a chance to use his gift to do good in the galaxy. But if he chooses to stay here, we’ll honor that decision. The Force guides us, but it doesn’t control us. We all have a choice.”

The boy’s parents locked eyes for a long moment, as if they were silently speaking to each other, weighing what to do next. Eventually they looked at their son, then back at Sam and Cara.

“Can we take some time to talk to him about it? Are you staying here for a while?” Wayde asked.

“Of course,” Sam replied, then told them where she and Cara were staying while visiting the colony.

They all parted ways with a promise to regroup again in a day or two. Upon returning to their rented space, Sam immediately called up Cal on her holo-transmitter and told him what had transpired.

“We don’t know yet if he’ll come or not, but he seemed excited,” she concluded.

“Looks like he’s not the only one,” the red-headed Jedi commented with a grin. His apprentice could hardly sit still as she’d relayed the story to him. “A fellow Alderaanian, huh? What are the chances?”

“That would be a question for BD,” Sam quipped, referring to Cal’s ever-present buddy droid, who chirped enthusiastically from his shoulder.

“Not actually interested in the real odds, Sam. But you know what this means, don’t you?”

“Umm....no?”

Cal smiled widely at her. “It means if he does come, you’ll have your first padawan.”

Sam’s mouth opened to speak but no words came out. Taking on a padawan of her own...well that would make her a master. The idea had been discussed between the two of them before, but it had always seemed like a far away concept, something that would only ever be possible, never actual. But now Cal was talking like it was a foregone conclusion, like no one else would even be considered for the role of Dash’s master. The job was already hers. It did make sense -- no one else could fully understand the struggles he would go through as a child of a world long gone, like she did. The prospect was as daunting as it was thrilling.  
“Master Cardell....” she said finally. “Rolls off the tongue, huh?”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself there, apprentice,” Cal said, bringing her back down quickly with the final word. “He does have to agree to come along first.”

Sam nodded. “I have a feeling he will,” she said. “I see a lot of myself in him.”

“Oh, Maker help us,” the elder Jedi joked. “Well, give me a call again if that’s the case. We’ll come pick you guys up ourselves.”

“You got it, Master.”

~

Sam’s intuition about the boy had been spot on. A day after their first meeting, Dash and his parents had knocked on her and Cara’s door to say that he was in.

She could still sense hesitation in the minds of Marlee and Wayde, but she could also tell that they were proud of the choice he had made, and that they trusted their fellow Alderaanians to take care of their son. Over the course of the next week, the five of them met at least once a day, and each time Sam made sure to ask each member of the family if they were sure of what they’d decided. And each day the answers were the same.

Still, by the time the rest of the _Mantis_ crew arrived to pick them up, the goodbyes between parents and son were as difficult as ever. Sam gave them all the time they needed, all the while wishing desperately that she’d had more time to say her own goodbyes, that the last time she’d seen her mother hadn’t been such a hurried, frantic affair and that she’d gotten to say goodbye to Cara at all. But the past was the past. All she could do now was give her padawan-to-be as much time as she wished she’d had. And be thankful for her second chance with Cara.

After a long, emotional day and a long, informational evening in which Dash was introduced to the rest of the crew and shown around the ship, he fell sound asleep almost instantly once they left him to his bunk.

At least, most of them left him. Sam on the other hand couldn’t pry herself away from the opening to the cramped compartment serving as his room. It was hitting her all at once as she watched him sleep -- the heaviness of the responsibility she now had, the expectations of not only the boy’s parents but the Order itself, not to mention her own desire to do right by the kid that reminded her so much of herself.

“Hey. You being a creep?”

Cara’s soft but accusatory voice broke her from her thoughts.

“No,” she said instinctively, then sighed as the other woman approached her with a skeptical look. “Okay, well...probably.”

“For a good reason I hope?” the mercenary said, joining her at the door and wrapping an arm around her waist.

“I guess. It’s just....when we found him I was so excited, so happy to...see myself in someone. I was so focused on making sure he’d come with us.” Sam shook her head. “But now I’m just...terrified.”

“Of what?”

“Of...screwing it up. What if I'm not ready? What if I’m not a good master?”

“Don’t,” Cara said, turning to stand in front of her. “Sammy, you’re gonna be great at this. I know you are.”

“He's already so scared Cara,” Sam protested, looking in at the boy with worried eyes. “He’s good at hiding it but I can read him. He’s just...a scared little kid.”

“So were you at that age if I remember correctly,” her partner pointed out. “Wouldn’t it have made your life a lot less scary back then if someone had come up to you and told you what you were? Told you they were going to help you learn to control your powers?”

“Maybe,” the Jedi said, fixating her eyes on her feet. “But I don’t think I would have gone with them.”

“I do,” Cara countered. “You were always looking for the answers Sam, always looking for a big adventure.”

“Sure but I...I wouldn’t have wanted to leave my family.” She looked up again as she took the other woman’s hand. “Or you.”

“But you would have done it anyway. Because this is who you are. It’s who you always were. And it’s who he is too.” Cara gave her hand a supportive squeeze. “Trust the Force, Cardell.”

With that, the mercenary stepped past her, nudging her with her elbow along the way. Sam could only smile and shake her head as she turned to watch her go.

“You sure _you’re_ not a Jedi Master?”

Cara turned on her heel and shrugged arrogantly. “I’ll teach a class or two if you want.”

The Jedi chuckled. “Not how that works.”

“Shows how much you know, padamon.” With a wink she turned again and strode out of sight.


	2. The Dance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, as I stated when I posted the previous chapter, I have no idea what this is other than a collection of just random stuff I want to write about these characters. Therefore there’s absolutely no rules or timeline or continuous storyline (as such, I’ll try to make sure I include a general time/year with each addition). I’ve had this particular bit in mind ever since I wrote chapter 3 of the main story, so I’m glad to finally be getting it out in its full form. I firmly believe that despite her badass persona, Cara is very soft at heart and was also way, way softer before Alderaan was destroyed. Hence *gestures at story* Oh, also. The factual error I included in that chapter is also included here. Alderaan had no moon, canonically. But I needed it to. Please forgive my inaccuracy.

_**~Alderaan, 3 BBY~** _

“Torvus? Seriously?”

Sam wasn’t sure she’d heard Cara correctly as the two of them strolled leisurely from the academy to Jolee’s Restaurant. Surely she hadn’t just said she was planning to go to the Spring Festival dance with Torvus Kane? For one thing, he was part of the group of goons that had bullied everyone in their class since as far back as Sam could remember. For another, more important thing, she thought they’d had an unspoken agreement to go together.

“Why not?” Cara said with a shrug. “He asked. No one else has asked.”

“But he’s....one of Goran’s goons,” Sam argued half-heartedly as she walked backward down the path in front of Cara as usual, and her best friend’s eyes narrowed with a doubtful look.

“We both know he hasn’t hung out with Goran in years, Sammy,” she said. “What’s the real problem?”

The taller Alderaanian looked away, hoping to hide her discomfort as she worked out whether or not to tell Cara how she truly felt about her announcement. She knew it wouldn’t work -- Cara could read her as easily as she read a book or a datapad. But even with that knowledge, Sam didn’t think she wanted to tell her. She didn’t want to tell her that every time one of the boys at school asked her best friend out she secretly hoped she would say no. She didn’t want to tell her that she would have asked her to the dance if she’d known she needed to. She definitely didn’t want to tell her that she had hoped this Spring Festival would finally be the thing that brought them together in the way she wanted.

“I just....thought we were going to go together,” she said finally. “You know, as...as friends.”

“Well yeah,” Cara said with an air of obviousness. “We still are, it’s just that Torvus will be there too.”

Sam sighed. “That’s not the same thing.”

“Why not?”

“Because, that’s...that’s a date, Cara,” she argued. “I can’t go on a date with you and Torvus.”

Cara laughed, her pretty brown eyes sparkling in the afternoon Alderaanian sun. “It’s not a date, Sam. He just needs people to hang out with.”

Sam tried to ignore the way her heartbeat picked up speed with her friend’s laughter and instead focus on what she said. “The whole school’s gonna be there, why can’t he hang out with literally anybody else?”

“Why can’t he hang out with us?”

Sam had to bite down on her tongue to keep from saying the real reason. “It’s just, this is the last dance before we’re done with school,” she said, anxiously rubbing the back of her neck. “And I thought, you know--”

“You thought you’d have me all to yourself?” Cara finished, and Sam’s eyes shot open.

“I...no-- what? That’s--”

Her stammered reply was cut off as Cara had to move her out of the way of an oncoming pedestrian at her back, something that only occasionally had to occur despite Sam’s practice of walking that way daily. Usually she could somehow sense when she needed to move on her own, a skill the shorter girl found endlessly fascinating. But in the moment she was clearly too distracted for that to work.

“Real smooth, Cardell,” Cara said with another laugh as they continued on. “Look it’ll be fine. Maybe he’ll realize how boring we are as soon as we get there and then find someone else to spend the rest of the time with.”

She grabbed her friend by the arm once again to stop her, as they were already in front of Jolee’s, and went inside. Sam stood and watched for a second, sighing to herself.

“Maybe...”

~

The morning of the Spring Festival dance, Sam informed Cara that she couldn’t go after all.

For the past two weeks, since the Torvus announcement, she’d tried to tell herself to just go and suck it up, just go and don’t make it weird. But she failed. She knew she couldn’t bear to be there, inevitably stuck watching Cara dance with him and who knows who else. She knew she’d ruin everyone else’s fun with her bad mood. So she made up an excuse.

“Mom’s always short handed on Festival night and she’s been really stressed lately, so I think it’s better if I just stay and work instead,” she explained, trying not to notice Cara’s face fall as she did.

“But...Sam,” the dark-eyed girl said, “it’s the last one, you said yourself--”

“I know but...what’s really that special about it anyway, you know?” Sam reasoned with her best fake light tone and nonchalant shrug. “We can hang out any time.”

Cara stared at her so long that Sam began to think she was about to call her out for being full of bantha crap.

“You’re sure?” she said instead.

Sam shoved her hands in her pockets and nodded. “Yeah. I’ll see you tomorrow, or...you know, whenever.”

And with that, she turned and left for her first class of the day without giving Cara the chance to try to change her mind.

That evening, Sam moped around the restaurant as she tended to the usual crowd at both the bar and the tables. One part of her story had been true -- Jolee did tend to be short-handed on Festival nights, with most of her younger employees out at the dance themselves. But there was hardly enough of a crowd for it to be a problem, and in fact Sam spent most of the dinner hours completely spacing out.

She couldn’t help but wonder how Cara was enjoying the dance, how she looked in her fancy clothes and hair, how she was getting on with Torvus. Over the last few years, Sam had had to sit back and watch as the boys at school had finally begun to see what she had always seen in her friend. Every time Cara had actually gone out with one of them she had always come back saying it was nothing special, but surely that would change one day. Her best friend was so beautiful, so kind, supportive, generous, and funny. One day someone would come along and sweep her off her feet like she deserved, and the thought of that day made Sam sick to her stomach.

She supposed the same thing could potentially happen to her, though definitely not with a boy -- Sam had never once felt any sort of interest in them. But none of the few girls she’d very briefly dated had ever lived up to Cara’s example. So most of the time Sam figured she’d end up on her own, eventually leaving Alderaan to explore the galaxy and her as yet unexplained powers. The prospect had always seemed equal parts exciting and lonely.

Her quiet contemplation was interrupted suddenly by the voice of one of the regulars.

“Young Sam,” called old Edmond from the table in the middle of the dining room, where he sat among his friends, “why aren’t you out enjoying this exquisite Festival night with all your friends?”

Snapping out of her daze, Sam shook her head in amusement. Edmond had always reminded her of her father -- both because of his oddly formal way of speaking and his instinctive need to check up on her.

“And miss out on all the fun here? Never,” she said brightly, to the delight of the other old men. Despite the jaunty music that emanated from the audio player in the corner, the restaurant had a decidedly subdued tone at the moment. Aside from the table of Alderaanian elders, there were few patrons present.

“No need to lie, young one,” Edmond told her in his fatherly way. “But remember, you are only young once.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

“I would have thought you would at least like to attend the event with your lovely friend Miss Dune, no?” he asked as she came over to refill their drinks, and Sam had to focus on keeping her face neutral and the drink pitcher from falling out of her hand. The old men knew Cara almost as well as they knew her at this point, as she often hung around while she was working. They knew her father far better, as he was an important figure in local politics who often sought their guidance.

“Well...Miss Dune is actually having fun there with some other friends this time,” she said flatly, not noticing the knowing looks and grins the old men all wore.

“Or perhaps she’s worried about missing out on the fun here as well, hmm?” Edmond said, and Sam quirked an eyebrow at him as she topped off the last drink. She finally saw the sly smile on his face as he pointed past her toward the front entrance.

She turned around in confusion, and quickly forgot how to breathe. There was Cara, all done up and perfect, smiling at her softly. Sam always thought she looked perfect, but this was a whole new level. She must have stared at her for an inappropriately long time, because Cara eventually looked down at herself as if wondering if she’d spilled something on her clothes.

“What?” she asked, and the tall Alderaanian snapped back to reality.

“I just, uhh...what-what are you doing here?” _Real smooth indeed, Cardell_.

“Spending Spring Festival night with my best friend,” Cara said, stepping toward her as she forgot completely about refilling the old men’s drinks. “That okay?”

“Well yeah but, what about the dance?”

Cara shrugged. “It was alright.”

“Just alright?”

“Alright might even be a stretch, actually,” she said with a grin, and Sam didn’t know what that meant exactly but she couldn’t help but grin back. Just as she was about to ask, a customer in the corner caught her attention to ask for a new drink.

“Hold that thought,” Sam said, holding up a finger.

She had to hold the thought for quite a while, as one customer request followed another and Sam was soon running around the restaurant attending to everyone’s needs. When the crowd grew, Cara decided to change out of her fancy outfit and help her friend, and even though it was work, she realized that she was having far more fun there than she ever would have at the dance. The gray-eyed girl somehow always made working there fun, joking with the customers, dancing goofily to the music, and causing her mother as much good-natured grief as she possibly could in the kitchen.

By the time Jolee’s closed up for the night, Cara had almost forgotten about the dance altogether. At least, until Sam brought it up as she lazily mopped the floor.

“So, was Torvus that bad of a dancer?” she asked, stopping to lean casually on her mop handle.

Cara’s face scrunched in confusion. “Wait, how did you know that?”

“Huh?” Sam said, her sly smile changing to a confused look of her own. “I was just making a joke.”

The shorter girl chuckled and shook her head. “Well, he was...awful,” she said with a laugh, which Sam matched.

“That’s not overly surprising, in retrospect,” she said, her smile growing wider. Cara’s smile grew as well, and she was looking at her with a glint in her dark eyes Sam didn’t quite recognize. “What?”

Cara shook her head dismissively. “Nothing, just....you should have been there. We could have made fun of him together to his face.”

“That seems a little cruel.”

“You’re the one that wanted me to turn him down in the first place,” she reminded Sam.

“He’s not some lonely little kid, he could have gone with anybody else. Or no one,” the taller girl argued. “Hell, you’re the one that left him. Is he there by himself now?”

“Not exactly. He said he was going to hang out with other friends when I left.”

“Uh huh. See?” Sam said with an _I told you so_ of a gesture as she sat down on the edge of a table.

“See what?” Cara asked innocently.

“It _was_ a date. He was in it for you, not for new friends.”

“Alright alright, so you get people better than I do,” Cara admitted with a roll of her eyes. “Are you happy? You were right.”

“I am happy you agree I was right,” Sam said. “Not so much that you didn’t have a good time.”

A doubtful retort died on Cara’s lips as Jolee emerged into the dining room from the kitchen. She playfully admonished her daughter for sitting down on the job, then thanked them both for their work that night. With a warning to Sam not to stay out too late, she left, and it was just the two of them.

“Liar,” Cara said the moment the door closed.

“What?”

“Of course you’re happy I didn’t have a good time,” she said. “Or else I wouldn’t have been here all night.”

Sam fidgeted under her gaze. She may have been the better of the two of them at understanding most people, but Cara knew her better than anyone. There was no sense in lying again.

“Okay, yeah,” she admitted, crossing her arms over her chest. “Does that make me a bad person?”

Cara stared at her, studying her, then shook her head.

“No,” she said softly, then smiled again. “I’m happy I didn’t have a good time too.”

Sam’s guilty look gave way to a wide smile, but it quickly morphed into a smirk. “Just how bad a dancer _was_ he?”

Cara let out a laugh. “You want me to show you?”

“Oh, I do now,” Sam said, and her friend stepped forward to pull her up from the table. “What--No, show, you said.”

“You have to experience it, trust me,” the dark-eyed girl promised, removing the mop handle from Sam’s grasp and replacing it with her own hand.

“Cara, no, I...got work to do,” Sam whined.

“You didn’t ten seconds ago,” Cara said, earning an eye roll from her friend as she moved them into a dancing posture. “Look, you’re me--”

“Oh, okay,” said the taller girl, bending her knees until she was Cara’s height, several inches below her own. This invited a swift but well-placed punch to her rib cage. “Ow.”

“Smartass. So he had me like this...” Sam did her best to stay calm as Cara demonstrated Torvus’s hand positioning, which she felt was bordering on inappropriate for a school dance. “And then he kept, stepping on my feet--”

“Ow,” Sam repeated as Cara demonstrated that as well.

“--and his breath was just...” she trailed off then made a gagging noise, to which Sam nodded humorously as they continued to hold onto each other, moving almost unconsciously along with the music still playing softly from the corner of the dining room.

“Guess you’ll think twice before accidentally agreeing to a date again, huh?” Sam said with a smirk.

“Yeah....” Cara agreed, her voice and eyes soft as she looked back at her. “You would have been a much better dance partner.”

“Think so?”

“I do,” she said, leaning in to rest her head on Sam’s shoulder. “We just fit better.”

Somehow Sam’s body kept moving, a tremendous feat considering her brain stalled completely for a moment. At once she felt both ice cold and like her whole body was on fire. She and Cara had been metaphorically close since pretty much the day they’d met, and of course they’d never been shy about giving friendly hugs or touches now and then. But this...this was different. This was exactly what Sam had dreamed about when she’d thought of their last Spring Festival dance.

They did fit perfectly together, she realized once her mind was capable of thought again. Cara’s hand in hers, the other now in an appropriate but still exhilarating spot on her back, her head on Sam’s collarbone at the perfect height for the sweet aroma of her hair to drift into her nose, it was all just...perfect. After a brief internal debate over whether the move would be a step too far, Sam dared to rest her own head on top of Cara’s. Her bravery was rewarded, as the shorter girl seemed to smile against her and subtly move her body ever so slightly closer.

They stayed that way, swaying quietly and holding on, for some amount of time that Sam could never determine later. It could have been a few minutes, or it could have been all the way through to the wee hours of the morning. All she knew was that she wasn’t ready to let go when Cara began to mumble into her shoulder.

“Hm?”

“I said the music ended,” Cara repeated.

“Oh.” Sam lifted her head and looked at the now idle audio player. She’d long ago programmed it to shut off on its own after a certain time, after accepting that she was indeed too irresponsible to remember to turn it off after cleaning up most nights. Without thinking, she released her friend, and the moment was over. “Uh, s-sorry...”

“There’s nothing to be sorry for, Sammy,” Cara said, watching her frantically pick the mop back up in an attempt to hide her nervousness.

“Well I mean, it’s-it’s late, you should probably...you know, get home,” Sam uttered half-heartedly.

“You want me to leave?”

She snapped her head back to look at Cara, who wore a pained frown.

“No, of course not,” she corrected. That look almost broke her heart. Of course she didn’t want Cara to leave. But she wasn’t sure she could survive any more of whatever had just happened. Especially if it didn’t mean what she wanted it to. “I just...don’t want you to be out too late by yourself.”

It was a lame excuse -- they both knew the walk from the restaurant to Cara’s home was through one of the safest parts of the city. But her friend let it slide.

“Well...why don’t you walk me home then?” she suggested.

“I still have a lot of stuff to do here....”

“Alright, I’ll help you,” Cara said, reaching for the mop again, “and then you can walk me home. Deal?”

Their hands brushed together as she took the mop, and in that moment Sam would have agreed to anything.

“Deal.”

Sam’s mind raced in circles as they finished the chores and locked up, then set out for Cara’s house. She didn’t know how to interpret what had happened. It had started out as a joke, a demonstration, but it certainly hadn’t ended as one. Had Cara done that on purpose? Had she wanted to be close to Sam as much as Sam wanted to be close to her?

The questions swirled in her head as they walked along under the moonlight, Sam in typical backward fashion. Cara shook her head at her distracted friend, noting that it was definitely a good thing there was no one else out for her to run into this time.

“Can I ask you something?” she said after a while.

Sam looked up from watching her feet to see her curious head tilt. “Always.”

“Why do you always walk like that?”

“I....like to look at you when we’re talking,” the tall Alderaanian said with a shrug, satisfied with the half-truth over the poor lies she’d been offering up all day. As was her way, though, Cara didn’t let her get away with anything less than the full truth.

“But we weren’t talking,” she pointed out. “Just now, before I asked, we weren’t talking but you were still doing that.”

Sam glanced back down at her feet, considering taking the lying route after all. But she decided that the best way to get answers to her own questions might just be to tell the whole truth.

“I guess I just...like to look at you,” she said, doing just that, a soft smile on her lips.

“Ohhh....that's understandable,” Cara responded with a wink, and Sam wasn’t sure how she’d be able to go the rest of the way on her weakened knees.

Soon enough they made it to the Dune home, though, and she found she wasn’t at all ready for the night to end. It didn’t appear that Cara was either. Rather than going to the front door as usual, she wandered to the back of the house with Sam close behind. A cool breeze rustled through the smattering of trees in the yard, but it was otherwise quiet between them. At the base of the tallest tree, Cara nudged her friend with her elbow and pointed up.

“Dare you to climb it.”

Sam shot her a look that clearly said she thought her friend was nuts. “Why would I do that?”

“Because I just dared you.”

The moonlight lit Cara’s face gently as she smirked, and Sam growled, knowing full well that was enough of a reason. She’d never backed down from one of her challenges before and she wasn’t going to start now. Not tonight, of all nights.

“Fine,” she grumbled. “But only if you do too.”

“Lead the way, Cardell.”

It wasn’t until halfway up to the thickest branch that Sam wondered just why in the hell she agreed to these things, but by then it was too late to back out. Cara was right behind her, matching exactly the hand and foot holds she mapped out on the way up, trusting her guidance implicitly. Once they reached their destination, though, she remembered why she always went along with her friend’s crazy suggestions. The view was unexpectedly breathtaking. Through the branches and leaves, they could see the glittering lights of Crevasse City from a whole new angle. Sam made sure to keep looking at either that or Cara and not the ground, so as not to think about how a fall from that height would undoubtedly break her legs.

They settled into an easy conversation, and Sam realized they could have stayed up there all night, talking about everything from their upcoming end of term exams to the rumored rebellion rising against the Empire. Throughout the talking, she was entirely aware of how close they were again. Her right hand brushed against Cara’s left between them as they each clung to the tree as much as possible while their legs dangled beneath them. Their shoulders touched repeatedly, bumping as they laughed loudly at each other’s stories. At one point Cara laid her head on Sam’s shoulder and the taller girl began to wonder if she was dreaming. It was all so magical, and yet it didn’t seem like enough. It might never be enough. Unless....

“Can I ask you something?” she asked at a lull in the conversation.

“Always,” Cara said, echoing Sam’s own previous answer to the same request.

The gray-eyed Alderaanian turned to look at her friend as fully as possible. “How long had the music been off when you said it ended?”

Cara bit her bottom lip and glanced down at their feet.

“A while,” she admitted, and Sam shook her head with a slight laugh.

“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” she pressed.

“Because I was afraid you’d let go,” Cara said softly. “And I didn’t want that to happen yet.”

Her dark eyes held Sam’s gaze intensely. They weren’t smiling like they had been for most of the night. Instead they held....some in-between feeling that Sam couldn’t quite interpret, as if Cara’s very emotions hung in the balance based on what she did next. One decision would make her happy. The opposite one would cause her pain. And causing her best friend pain, she knew, was a sure way to break her own heart. She had to choose wisely. And quickly.

Without really understanding why she made the choice she did -- just noting involuntarily once again how far the fall from the branch would be -- Sam leaned slowly toward her best friend. Her eyes fluttered shut in unison with Cara’s, and she felt her heart begin to beat out of control.

At the very moment their lips were about to come together, Sam’s shaky hand slipped from its place on the branch, causing her kiss to land weakly -- on Cara’s chin.

Sam pulled away quickly in embarrassment. Surely that was a sign. She’d made the wrong choice.

“Blast it, I-I-I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have--”

“Sammy,” Cara cut off her muttering, reaching up to Sam’s chin to turn her eyes back to her own. “It’s okay. But you missed.”

This time she was smiling again. This time the choice was clear. This time Sam didn’t need to wonder about the decision, because a voice in her head that sounded suspiciously like Cara’s was whispering, _Try again_.

Willing her rogue right hand to stop shaking, Sam lifted it slowly to her best friend’s face. She grazed her thumb over the dimple in her cheek as she smiled herself. Then, more quickly this time, she closed the gap between them, successfully connecting Cara’s soft lips with hers.

The same hot and cold feeling from back at the restaurant swept over her again, but this time the fire won out. Her whole body tingled with heat and electricity. She’d never felt more alive.

It lasted only a few seconds, but Sam knew instantly that it would live on forever in her mind and heart. They pulled back to look at each other, each wearing the biggest grins the other had ever seen. They laughed at the sight.

Cara was about to go in for another when a voice from the ground broke through their magic bubble in the tree.

“Carasynthia, are you out here?” her mother cried out. “We heard voices.”

Sam tried not to laugh at the use of her best friend’s full first name, but she was unsuccessful and received a sharp elbow for her trouble.

“Yeah, Mom,” Cara answered. “I’m up here. In the tree.”

“What are you doing up there?” her father asked, less as an actual point of interest and more as an admonishment.

“Just...hanging out.”

“Is that boy up there with you?”

“No, Dad!” Cara yelled, nudging Sam to back her up.

“It’s just me Mister Dune, uh, sir,” the taller girl called out. Cara’s dad had always made her nervous and she suspected he didn’t like her all that much, so she attempted to be as respectful as possible.

“Samira?” her mother said, confusion obvious in her voice.

“Mom, how many times do I have to tell you she doesn’t like to be called that?”

“Once more I’m afraid, dear,” the woman said. “Why don’t you both come down now, it’s getting rather late.”

“Yeah, I’ll be right in. Don’t wait up,” Cara advised, and within seconds they heard the door woosh closed again. She sighed. “That was great timing.”

“Could have been worse,” Sam said with a shrug.

“You’re right. If it had been ten seconds earlier, who knows how long I would have had to wait for you to finally do that?” Cara said, then denied the other girl a chance to retort as she kissed her, with all the confidence that Sam had lacked.

Sam was still dazed when Cara began the climb down, but she followed nonetheless and somehow they managed to make it to the ground without any fractured limbs. She walked her best friend to the back door of the house, where Cara peeked inside.

“What are you looking at?” the tall, oblivious Alderaanian asked.

“Just making sure the coast is clear,” Cara said, turning around again with a smirk.

“For what?”

“For my Spring Festival date to send me off with a good-night kiss.”

She reached out and took hold of Sam’s shirt, pulling her gently forward until they were as close as they’d been while dancing. Sam smiled widely, still not quite believing her luck, then bent down to give Cara the good-night kiss she deserved, the one she’d longed to give her for ages.

She was glad Cara was the one to tear herself away in the end, as she was positive she couldn’t have done it herself. Her best friend pushed her backward with a light shove and opened the door to go inside.

And Sam, not willing to ever turn around and take her eyes off her, continued walking backward the whole way home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well this turned out to be the longest chapter I have ever written, and honestly I had to hold back in places to keep it from being even longer. Oops! And it's not even very Star Wars-y but I have no regrets. Anyway mostly all this has done is made me extra sad about the 11 years they spent apart so I advise anyone who enjoyed this, don’t think about that!


	3. Spectre

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The crew meets a new recruit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaahh happy season two!! This is what I worked on the last couple of days to keep myself busy instead of sitting around waiting. Oh wait, I was still doing that.
> 
> Anyway, this is back in the most updated sort of time frame for this crew (after the epilogue of the main story). Mostly wanted to write something where Sam and Cara were being hella Married and also Parents. Ended up slightly sadder than I meant but that tends to happen.
> 
> SPOILER WARNING for Star Wars Rebels! If you don't want to know about stuff that happens in the last season of that, skip this chapter!

Two years of traversing the galaxy in search of new Jedi to train hadn’t quite yielded the results Sam had expected.

When the Empire was still running things, the _Mantis_ crew had seemingly been far busier. But since the end of the war, the practice of monitoring transmissions for mentions of possible Force-related activity was pointless. There were no longer Inquisitors on the way each time the crew found someone. And these days, finding someone at all was mostly a matter of pure luck.

But not in the case of Jacen Syndulla.

Sam was pleasantly surprised when Cal and Cere began briefing the crew on their upcoming excursion to check out a possible new recruit.

“Wait, someone’s trying to seek us?” she asked, summing up the conversation thus far. “How is that even possible? How do they know about us?”

“They know Luke and trust him and he trusts them,” Cal explained. “The kid’s mother was a Rebel general during the war.”

“Ah. Easy enough. So, where to?”

“Lothal.”

“And...where is that?” the Alderaanian Jedi inquired.

“Outer Rim Territories,” Cara answered shortly, arms crossed as she stared down at the holotable around which they were all standing. Sam looked at her in surprise.

“How do you know that? I’ve never heard of it.”

“It’s one of the first places the Rebels scored a real victory over the Empire. Not long after you left Alderaan." She finally lifted her eyes to glare at her partner. “Guess you were busy at the time.”

Sam’s eyes narrowed in confusion at her tone. “Umm...are we fighting?”

“No. Why would you think that?”

“It’s just you...you sound like you’re mad at me.”

“Should I be?”

“I didn’t think so but--”

“If you two are in the middle of something, please take it elsewhere,” Cal requested in an almost bored tone.

The two Alderaanians stayed quiet for the remainder of the briefing, which Sam found mercifully, well, brief. As the crew broke up to make preparations for the trip to Lothal, she cornered Cara before she could leave the common area.

“Okay seriously, is something wrong?” She hadn’t sensed anything off between them until the briefing, but the way they’d interacted was highly unusual if there wasn’t something on Cara’s mind. Sam knew she could find out for herself, but she also knew that if her partner found out she’d done that without her permission it would only make matters worse.

“I dunno Sam, maybe I’m just having a negative reaction to you thinking you’re the only one that knows everything just because you can read people’s minds,” the mercenary stated in the same voice as before, somewhere between annoyed and downright angry.

“Woah, okay,” the Jedi said, holding up her hands in defense. “Um...definitely don’t think that, never have.”

She had acted surprised that Cara knew about a planet she’d never heard of, sure, but that was more of an impressed surprise than a condescending one. Her partner should have known that.

“Oh no? What about when you thought it was cool to just leave me behind on Alderaan without a word about where you were going?”

Sam was taken aback. Suddenly this odd squabble was a very concerning conversation. The subject of her sudden departure to join Cal and the crew had long ago been explained and subsequently forgiven. Or so she thought.

“Cara what is....what is going on right now?” she said, cautiously reaching out for her. “You’ve never talked about this.”

The mercenary sighed and allowed herself to be brought in for a hug before grumbling a response. “I don’t know. I think it’s just been too long since I’ve hit something, I’m just looking for a fight.”

“Oh.” The Jedi’s eyes widened momentarily before a frown set in. “That’s....a little scary...”

“I know, I’m sorry. Look, I’m not actually mad at you,” Cara assured with a kiss as she broke from her embrace. “Not about that.”

“Good,” Sam replied, watching her head toward the back of the ship before taking in what she’d actually said. “Wait, not about that?”

“I’m off to go hit something before we leave,” the dark-haired woman called over her shoulder with a wave.

“Cara! Not about that?”

~

Hera and Jacen Syndulla were by far the most interesting family that Sam had seen since meeting Mando and his little one.

She was a full-blooded Twi’lek, tall and green-skinned and beautiful. But her son was decidedly _not_ completely Twi’lek himself. He was tall like his mother -- at least a few inches taller than Dash despite being roughly the same age -- but that seemed to be where the similarities ended. His skin was, for the most part, the same pale shade as most of the humans of the Mantis crew. He had no lekku headtails but instead possessed green-tipped ears and the brightest, greenest hair Sam had ever seen.

Soon after the crew’s arrival on Lothal, the former general explained that the boy’s father -- whom he’d never known -- was a human. And not just any human, a Jedi named Kanan Jarrus.

“When we met, he was in hiding,” she said, and Sam couldn’t help but experience the conflicted swirl of emotions that accompanied Hera’s memory as it found her own mind. “We traveled together for a long time. Our crew was...like our family. We did a lot of good against the Empire, but I think what we both treasured more was just what we all had together on the _Ghost_.”

An old, orange and white C-series astromech droid grunted its agreement from nearby.

“Yep, old Chopper here is the only one of them I still see every day now,” Hera said distantly before shaking her head. “I’d hoped Jacen could be trained by the other Jedi in our crew, but Ezra’s always been off on his own mission, so....I thought Luke would be the next best option. And I guess being at an academy with others like him will do him good too.”

“He’ll be well taken care of,” Cere promised her. “And if Ezra would ever like to have a hand in training him, I’m sure Luke would gladly take all the help he can get.”

Hera smiled. “I’ll be sure to let him know.”

The crew spent the rest of the day getting to know the Syndullas better, from Hera’s history as one of the best pilots in the galaxy to Jacen’s blossoming strength with the Force and everything in between. They found out about the rest of her old crew as well -- the old Lasat captain, the Mandalorian art and weapons prodigy (about whom Mando was very interested to learn more), and the two Jedi, Kanan and Ezra. Hearing about them all, Sam could find many parallels with her own crew, something that the Twi’lek woman seemed to pick up on herself once they were the ones telling stories. The Alderaanian adults eventually explained how they’d come to find Sam’s padawan, and the mother smiled widely as they each spoke about how great of a student and young man he was becoming.

After an evening meal, some of the _Mantis_ crew returned to the ship for the night, but Sam opted to sit outside with Hera, watching with amusement as Cara and Mando gave Dash and Jacen some wrestling lessons by the waning light of the Lothal sunset. The two boys had hit it off immediately, and the young Alderaanian couldn’t wait to show off how much fun his crew was so that his new friend would want to join it.

Hera laughed to herself as she noticed the dark-haired boy concentrating hard on copying every move Cara made.

“Is it weird to say that he looks like he could belong to you two?” she asked, and Sam had to laugh as well.

“You’d be surprised how often we hear that, actually,” she admitted with a shake of her head. It might have been weird, if she didn’t secretly love hearing it.

“Oh, I’m sure. He’s a good kid,” the Twi’lek observed. “And he seems to love you both a lot.”

“Yeah. We love him too,” Sam said with a smile as she watched the boy do his secret handshake with Cara after performing a move to perfection. After a few moments of silence, she heard a sniffle beside her and looked over to see Hera wiping a tear from her eye. “Is something wrong?”

Hera shook her head and composed herself again. “No, it’s just...you remind me a lot of Kanan.”

“Seriously good-looking Jedi?” Sam joked, smiling warmly in an attempt to keep the mood light. The mother had had an incredibly emotional day, the Jedi knew, far more than she’d let on.

“Of course,” Hera said with a chuckle, obviously appreciating Sam’s effort to make her smile. “But also because you love your crew like it’s your family. And you want the best for Dash because you care about him, not just because he’s your padawan. He’s lucky to have you to learn from.”

In the next few moments that their eyes met, Sam didn’t make an effort to read the woman’s mind, but she didn’t make an effort not to either, as it practically called out to her with a hundred different memories of Kanan Jarrus. From what she could tell, he was a far more impressive Jedi than she was, but they did have those things in common that Hera had said.

It was her last memories of him, though -- along with the ones Sam expected to see but didn’t -- that she knew were about to consume her own mind for the foreseeable future. Kanan had sacrificed his life to save his crew, to save Hera, only moments after she’d told him she loved him for the first time in earnest.

“I hope you’re right,” Sam said, shaking off the chill from her memories in order to continue their conversation. “This Kanan...it sounds like he was a good man. I wish I could have met him.”

“So do I...” Hera said, smiling softly still as she watched her son, Kanan’s son. “So do I.”

~

“Why does Jacen have a code name?”

“Huh?” Sam looked up from her datapad to find her padawan staring at her with curious gray eyes and at once lost interest in her research about Lothal’s history. She’d been perfectly content to spend a quiet morning alone with that and a hot cup of caf, but she could never turn him away when he reminded her so much of herself.

“His mom called him Spectre-7. He said it’s his code name,” Dash explained.

Sam chuckled. She’d heard Hera call the boy that but hadn’t thought anything of it. Of course the youngling would catch on to something cool like that.

“It’s a call sign, not a code name,” she corrected. The memories she’d witnessed from the pilot had told her the whole _Ghost_ crew had gone by Spectre call signs, Kanan as Spectre-1, Hera Spectre-2, and so on.

Dash shrugged. “What’s the difference?”

“Well, a call sign is what different members of a ship’s crew call each other over comms and things.”

“So...like a code name,” the boy said.

Sam began to refute his argument but couldn’t come up with a reason that he would be incorrect. “Yeah, I guess,” she conceded.

“Well why don’t we have them?”

A mischievous grin spread across the Jedi master’s face. “Oh, you want one? I’ll give you one.”

Dash recognized immediately what he’d just invited on himself and attempted to back out. “On second thought, I don’t want one.”

“Suit yourself, Mynock-3,” Sam said with a casual shrug as she tried on a call sign for the boy.

“I said I don’t want one.”

“Okay, Maverick.”

“Master...”

“Wild Bantha?”

Cara entered the common area as Sam continued to torture the boy with bad code name possibilities.

“What are you guys doing?” she asked brightly, and Sam pointed happily at him.

“I’m giving Dash Money here a call sign,” she explained. Cara clocked the combination of her partner’s grin and the padawan’s red face and knew she had to join the game.

“What? He’s already got one,” she said. Sam tilted her head in confusion, but Dash caught on immediately.

“Padamon is not even a word, it can’t be a code name!” he protested.

Sam held her hands up humorously. “My my, Little Starbird is touchy this morning.”

“I’m going to go hang out with Jacen,” Dash said, rolling his eyes dramatically before hustling off the ship.

The Jedi turned to her partner with feigned disappointment. “You ruined it.”

“Sorry dear,” Cara said with a laugh.

Sam’s eyes narrowed in thought. “...should we have call signs?”

“Let it go.”

“Okay.” Sam let it go immediately as Cara took advantage of the now-empty ship and sat down in her lap to kiss her. They sat there that way for a long while, Cara eventually laying her head on her shoulder, each of them lost in thought about the events of the previous day. The Jedi’s mind returned again to the memories she’d gotten from Hera, all the missed opportunities and regrets the woman now held. Her heart ached as she thought about how Hera would have to carry those regrets for the rest of her life. And with that ache came the realization that she too almost had to carry around a heart full of regrets for the rest of her life. Sam pulled her partner close and held on tight before letting out a quiet, “I’m so sorry.”

The mercenary looked up at her in confusion at the sudden change in mood. “What for?”

“For not telling you....when I left,” Sam explained, and it only took a moment for Cara to catch up.

“Sammy, I told you I’m not actually mad about that,” she reminded her.

“I know but...I am. Not mad, I guess, just...so, so sorry. I should have told you. I could have. I could have found a way, if I’d really wanted to.” More than once in the first months of her time with the _Mantis_ crew, Sam had considered asking for permission to contact Cara but always thought that she’d be denied. And then came the Disaster, and all hope of that had vanished. “I’ve had all these excuses for so long but not reasons, no good reasons why I didn’t do it. If nothing else I should have just....told you that I loved you one last time.”

“Honey where’s this coming from all of a sudden?” Cara asked sweetly, lifting Sam’s hanging head so that the Jedi could see the worried look in her eyes.

Sam hesitated, then sighed. “Hera. She and her Jedi, they...they waited too long. She only got to say it once. And now she’s stuck regretting it forever, all the times she didn’t say it. That could have been me, Cara. It should have been me.”

“Don’t say that. Hey.” Sam’s head had drooped once more, but Cara wouldn’t allow it. “We got our second chance, Sam. There’s no could haves or should haves anymore. There’s only what we do now.”

“I know,” Sam agreed. That had been her mindset since they’d gotten back together. But for whatever reason, she’d seemed to have forgotten it since talking with Hera.

“And I don’t know about you...but I think we’re doing pretty good now,” Cara said, her face changing from a worried frown to an encouraging grin, and Sam couldn’t fight a growing grin of her own.

She was right. They were good. What had happened to Kanan and Hera was tragic. What had happened to Alderaan was tragic. What could have happened to them was tragic. But it hadn’t happened. And their story was far from tragic, despite a few missteps along the way. They had each other, and Dash, and the rest of their crew. Their family. Nothing they could have or should have done differently would’ve given them anything better than that.

“Me too,” the Jedi said, bringing her close once again to kiss her deeply. When they broke apart, she looked at Cara with a cautiously curious face. “So...what was it that you were actually mad at me about before?”

The mercenary looked confused for only a moment before remembering the previous morning’s events. “Oh, right. You haven’t taken me on a vacation in forever.”

“Ah, and for that I am terribly sorry,” Sam said sincerely. “We’ll figure something out as soon as we get home, huh?”

“We better,” Cara said, then paused, “Bogling-2.”

The Jedi gasped with delight at her choice of call signs for their little family. “That’s perfect! Except I’m Bogling-1 actually.”

Cara shook her head as she got up from her lap.

“Not a chance, Jedi.”

~

“You could come with us, you know.”

Sam bumped Hera’s arm with her elbow gently as she made her offer. The Twi’lek woman smiled at her as they watched Jacen say his goodbyes to his mother’s astromech droid. After a week on Lothal, the _Mantis_ crew was hesitant to leave, but it was time to move on to the next place. And the green-haired boy was excited to be going with them.

“Thought you already had a pilot?” Hera said in response.

“Nah, Greez he’s gettin’ old. Needs to retire and let a more proficient pilot take over.”

“I heard that!” the Latero shouted from behind them. “And you can walk home!”

Hera laughed. “I think I’ll pass. Don’t want to cause drama,” she said. “Plus I’m planning to make myself useful to the New Republic.”

“I suppose they could use some good pilots too,” Sam conceded. It wasn’t common practice at all to offer the parents of their recruits a place in the crew, but Hera was a special case, and not just because the Alderaanian felt for her. “We’ll take good care of him. I promise.”

“I know, Sam. Thank you,” she said, but Sam could sense the typical hesitation within her. “I know this is what’s best for him, where he’s meant to be. I just....I know it’s going to feel so strange being alone now. I haven’t been alone since...before I met Kanan.”

“Why do I get the feeling Chopper wouldn’t appreciate being counted out of this equation?” the Jedi asked with a raised eyebrow. The cantankerous little droid undoubtedly considered himself just as much a part of Hera’s family as Jacen.

“That’s true. Guess I’m never really alone as long as I have Chop.” On cue, the droid rolled up to her with the boy at his side.

“Well, if you ever decide you need a non-mechanical voice to talk to, our comms are always open,” Sam assured her. “Far as I’m concerned, you’re both part of the family now. We’re no Spectres, but...still a fine crew if I say so myself.”

“That you are. Thank you, Sam,” Hera said, and the Jedi nodded and left her alone to say goodbye to her son.

She joined Cara and Dash at the base of the _Mantis_ ’s entry ramp, and the mercenary put an arm around her waist. They stood there together, watching yet another heart-wrenching departure. It was perhaps the one part of the job that Sam hated.

“She gonna be okay?” Cara asked.

Sam stared off at the pair, pondering the question. Hera was about to be left (mostly) alone on Lothal, where her family had gone through so much together. But even though her son was leaving and the rest of that family was either gone or off in faraway places, she would always have their love. It just had to spread all across the galaxy to get to her.

“Yeah,” she said finally. “She’ll be just fine.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please feel free to come yell with me about season 2 (what a premiere!!) or Rebels or anything at all really on tumblr @chippingthegoalkeeper


	4. The Cave

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m quite glad at this point that I did not commit to making this an actual sequel with an actual continuous plot because what I’ve done here I have no intention of coming back to even though it probably would need that. Alas, it’s just another random idea I couldn’t let go of after watching Empire for the millionth time.

Cara could count on one hand the amount of times she’d woken up before Sam since they’d been reunited.

When they were young, on Alderaan, it had happened far more often. Sam had liked nothing better than to sleep in until the last possible minute before school or work or whatever it was that they began the day with. But since her Jedi training had begun, that habit had been gradually conditioned out of her. Most mornings -- or whatever constituted the morning hours in outer space -- Cara would either wake to an empty bed or to a pair of adoring gray eyes studying her. She preferred the latter situation, but she knew the empty bed meant Sam was off getting an early start on her meditation or Dash’s training, and she couldn’t fault her for that.

This morning, however, the former shock trooper had been the first one up. For once she got to be the one to study Sam’s face while she slept, clearly still in the middle of a dream. Her face looked tired even in a deep sleep, worn and weathered by what appeared to be many more years than she’d actually lived. Cara supposed her own face was the same way. The years they’d spent apart certainly had felt much longer than they were.

As she watched her partner sleep, she began to understand why the Jedi engaged in that practice with her so often. They’d spent such a long time apart that it felt like a waste of existence not to spend every possible moment looking at the face she loved so much. But soon Cara heard the light rap of small knuckles on the door to their bunk.

“Master?”

She had to shake her head in amusement. Dash had no way of knowing that his voice was far too soft to ever wake up his heavy-sleeping mentor. Cara was about to wake her up herself to get started on the boy’s morning training, but Sam appeared to still be in the middle of whatever highly engaging dream had kept her asleep past the typical hour, so she let her rest.

“Hey kiddo,” she said, opening the door to a surprised look on the young padawan’s face. “How about I give you some different training this morning?”

Dash followed her eagerly to the “non-Force-users-only” training area she and Mando had set up outside of the Jedi temple, delighted to learn some new fighting techniques from the person he thought was the coolest in the galaxy.

Sam didn’t even notice she was alone when she woke up suddenly a while later, covered in sweat and full of confusion. It took several moments to remember where she was -- in her bed on the _Mantis_ , docked safely on the ground next to the Jedi academy. Not dying on a table in a stolen Imperial starship with a hole in her gut, like she’d been dreaming.

Remembering that wasn’t enough, though. The dream had felt so real. Traversing Gideon’s star cruiser looking for Cara had felt so real. The pain from the blaster bolt had felt so real. Sam had dreams of past events all the time, but none like that. None that made her question reality so much that she still didn’t believe fully that it was a dream even after touching her perfectly intact abdomen. This must have been the Force speaking to her. But why? What had she not learned from that incident the first time around?

Sam got up from the bed and went to stand in front of the mirror in the ‘fresher unit attached to her and Cara’s bunk, still in partial denial of what she saw there. She lifted the hem of her tattered sleep shirt, exposing the un-blasted flesh of her midsection. Finally she exhaled. She was fine. Mando’s special child with the special abilities had saved her, she remembered. And save for a few minor hiccups, life had been pretty good since then.

“What are you doing?”

Sam jumped at Cara’s voice, dropping her shirt and replying instinctively. “Nothing!”

Her partner eyed her with amused skepticism, and Sam could see she looked sweaty, as if returning from a workout.

“Were you...checking out your own abs?” Cara asked, a grin growing on her face as she stepped into the small unit and raised the Jedi’s shirt again for a peek. “That’s my job.”

“No, I was not,” Sam said, swatting her hand away half-heartedly. “Look, don’t worry but--”

“Instantly worried.” Cara cut her off, the grin replaced at once by an anxious look.

“I said _don’t_ worry. I’m fine,” Sam assured her, reaching out to hold Cara’s strong forearms in her hands. “I just...had a dream about when I got shot. And I dunno, it felt so real I just had to make sure that I was...”

“Still in one piece?” the mercenary finished.

“Exactly.”

“Well, take it from me,” she advised, pulling Sam to her and reaching a hand into her shirt to feel the abs she loved to check out. “You’re all here, Cardell.”

“Good,” Sam said with a laugh, then lifted the shirt to look down at herself again. “I do feel like I got cheated out of a cool scar, though.”

Cara rolled her eyes and shoved her away gently. “I can shoot you again if it would make you feel better,” she offered.

“Um no, that won’t be necessary, but thank you for your support.”

“Okay. Let me know if you change your mind.”

Sam was casual and cool as Cara brushed past her to undress for the shower, but inside, the burning of the blaster bolt continued to eat at her all morning.

~

Until Luke suggested they check the place out, Sam had never heard of the planet of Dagobah. Upon arriving there, she quickly realized why. There was no civilization to be found, nothing resembling human or near-human life. Nothing but a planet-wide jungle.

Immediately, Sam got the feeling they weren’t about to find out anything useful. But that was nothing new. Even two years after finding out that the wrinkly green child they protected from Moff Gideon was a clone of the great Master Yoda, the crew hadn’t come up with any more answers as to where his species originated or what that species even was. Ultimately it didn’t matter much to the child himself, but the Jedi all agreed that a people made up of such powerful Force-users as they seemed to be could be vital to their understanding of the Force itself.

And since the last place anyone had seen Master Yoda was the slimy mud hole known as Dagobah, it seemed an obvious next stop in the search for answers. At least, it had until they got there. So far all that the team of Sam, Cara, and Cal had found were snakes and swamps.

“Haven’t seen a planet so devoid of sentient life since Bogano,” Cara mused as they made their way through the fog-ridden swamp toward the coordinates Luke had provided as the place Yoda had lived in solitude.

“No kidding,” Sam agreed. It reminded her a lot of Bogano in fact, just a less-elevated, more damp version. They hadn’t been back to their crew’s original base planet for nearly a year, having no reason to go once the new Jedi academy had been established on another remote world, and she found that a part of her longed to be there again. “Do you ever miss it there?”

“I miss the cave,” the mercenary said with a shrug. “Well. I miss the cave before everyone knew about it.”

Sam grinned suggestively. “Well, maybe we’ll stumble on one while we’re here,” she said, immediately losing her step in a particularly well-hidden hole filled with cold water.

“You’ll certainly stumble on something,” Cara quipped with a roll of her eyes. “Thought Jedi were more graceful than that.”

“Very funny,” Sam grumbled, equal parts embarrassed by her lack of grace and uncomfortable because of her now soaked lower leg.

“Are you giving us a bad name again?” Cal asked from several paces ahead, where he was able to both study the holo-map BD-1 was projecting in front of him and walk without sticking half his leg in a hole.

“Again? When have I done that before, exactly?” the silver-haired Jedi questioned, then received a series of informative beeps and boops from the droid on Cal’s back. “Yeah okay, I get the point, BD, thank you.”

“Glad we’re all in agreement,” Cara said, grinning at her partner as they all continued on.

“Ignoring you. _All_ of you.”

A short while after the rest of the party grew bored of poking fun at Sam, they found what they’d come to see. Yoda’s hut was almost entirely grown over with vegetation, but it was right where the coordinates told them it would be. It was also, predictably, tiny. Between Sam’s height and Cara’s muscles and armor, there was only one option for checking the place out.

“I guess BD and I will look around in here,” Cal said, already working to clear away some of the vines and shrubbery around the hut with his lightsaber. “You guys wander around and see if you find anything else interesting. And try not to get lost.”

He joined Cara and the droid in looking pointedly at his former padawan. Sam rolled her eyes and fought the urge to make a rude gesture at them.

“You’re the ones that can get lost,” she muttered before starting off on her own.

Even years after he had last been there, Sam could strongly sense Luke’s presence around the camp, along with one that felt familiar but not quite recognizable. She assumed that was Yoda’s, and that the familiarity was due to the Mandalorian’s child being essentially made from him. It somehow made the whole place even more eerie, she realized.

“There’s nothing to see here,” concluded Cara, who had apparently tired quickly of exploring the swampy area without her partner.

“Not much to see, no,” Sam agreed distantly, more focused on following her feelings of Luke’s presence away from a small clearing scattered oddly with stacks of stones. “But plenty to sense.”

“Show-off.”

The farther they strayed from the hut, the more strange Sam felt. The Force was undoubtedly strong in this place, and she couldn’t help but feel that it was guiding her somewhere specific, but she couldn’t imagine why. She suddenly felt cold. But not the normal cold of deep space or the ice caves of Ilum. Somehow it felt....dark. Sinister. And along with it was the uneasy feeling she’d been holding onto since her dream of being shot.

Sam almost didn’t see what she was walking into as she followed the cold feeling. The clearing had given way to more foggy swamp, but she’d found something else at the edge of it. The trees and vines were grown together in a dense mass with an opening in the center, almost like--

“Are you kidding me? You _actually_ found a cave?” Cara said, a few steps behind the tall Jedi.

Sam focused her eyes on the natural structure in front of her. It was indeed a cave. But nothing like the one they’d discovered together on Bogano.

“No. Cara, don’t come any closer,” she warned, holding out a hand to stop her. “This...this is not that kind of cave....”

“What are you talking about? What kind of cave is it?”

“I don’t know,” Sam admitted, studying it with her eyes and reaching inside with the Force at the same time. “But it’s...it’s dark.”

“Well, yeah. That’s pretty typical of caves,” the mercenary said with an unbothered shrug. “Use your light stick.”

Finally Sam looked back at her, a serious look dashing away Cara’s playful curiosity. “I’m talking dark as in the Dark Side of the Force.”

In her years as a Jedi, Sam had had very few experiences at all with the Dark Side. There were remnants of it in the vault on Bogano, where Cal had battled with an Inquisitor. There were memories of tapping into it in Cere’s mind. And there had been hints of it within the child who’d used it to choke the former shock trooper. But this was far stronger than any of that. This whole place was dangerous, she felt. And yet she knew that she’d been led there for a reason. If any place on Dagobah had the answers they sought, if anything could explain why she’d dreamt so vividly of dying, this was the place.

“Oh...” Cara breathed, finally understanding. The Jedi turned back to the cave and slowly stepped toward the entrance. “Wait, Sam, you can’t go in there. You just said--”

“I have to, Cara,” Sam said calmly. “We came here for a reason, didn’t we?”

“Then I’m coming with you.” The mercenary stepped forward to pass by but Sam stopped her.

“No. Just...trust me,” she said, pleading with her partner through her gray eyes and praying it would work because she couldn’t put into words a real explanation. Cara could obviously handle herself against any number of dangers, but this wasn’t an evil that could be blasted or punched into submission. “I have to be the one.”

Cara studied her closely for a moment, but eventually relented. “You got five minutes, Cardell.”

Sam nodded once and turned slowly again toward the entrance. She stepped inside carefully, all her senses on high alert for anything out of the ordinary, but it mostly appeared to be just a darker extension of the swamp they’d spent all day traversing. Snakes and spiders crawled along below her feet and vines hung down low enough that she had to duck beneath them. Soon enough she came to what appeared to be the end, but Sam looked down to see a hole in the forest floor, large and deep enough to lower herself into. She did just that, and at once found herself in what looked more like a cave she was used to. Her lightsaber lit the corridor between dark stone walls, and she felt enveloped in the unnatural cold.

No more than a few steps into the cavern, Sam suddenly came face to face with the last person she expected to see.

Moff Gideon strode slowly toward her, his face wearing the same hateful scowl she’d seen first in the Mandalorian’s memories, then for herself on Bogano. In his hand was the same weapon he’d used against her and Cal, shimmering brightly in the darkness of the cave.

Instinctively, Sam threw out her hand to push him backward with the Force, but he didn’t budge. She tried to reach into his mind, but there was nothing there. The only thing between them was the dreadful, awful cold. Sam could feel it slowly seeping into her bones, filling her with dark thoughts and feelings.

She raised her lightsaber, and its pale blue blade flickered seemingly in slow motion, as did the black blade of Gideon’s weapon. In the back of Sam’s mind, she knew none of this was right. None of it was possible. Gideon was dead -- she should know, she killed him -- and the Darksaber was back in its rightful place with the Mandalorians. She _knew_ it wasn’t real, but she didn’t believe what she knew. It was just like the dream from the morning before.

Without a word between them, she struck. An angry slash at the dead moff’s head was parried easily, and Sam was nearly blinded by the burst of light that resulted from the blades’ meeting. Within the same brief second of light, an image flashed across her field of vision -- a great fire, engulfing an entire building in the night.

Gideon swung his saber at her this time and Sam blocked, both of them still moving unnaturally slowly. And again in the flash, an image. A metal hand bursting through rubble. _Luke’s hand...?_

She attacked again and saw Luke more clearly in the resulting flash, hunched over outside the burning building with R2-D2 by his side, and she knew, somehow, that the building engulfed in flames was the Jedi academy. Sam felt the cold inside her give way to a hot, furious hate.

_I won’t let you hurt them_ , she tried to say, but her mouth was stuck in an angry snarl. _I won’t let you hurt them_.

The Jedi brought her lightsaber over her head for one final strike, but before she could bring it down, Gideon thrust his own saber into her abdomen -- in exactly the place the blaster bolt had torn through her.

Sam crumpled to the ground and cried out in pain, but all she heard was a distant voice that wasn’t hers. _No!!_ it cried, along with a name she couldn’t make out, and the scream echoed through the cave and her mind in endless waves.

The next thing she knew, Cara was at her side, begging her to get up and out of the cave. Somehow she managed to do so, though probably more through the mercenary’s will than her own, and they were soon joined out in the clearing by Cal and BD.

“What happened?” the elder Jedi implored, but Sam seemed to be in a haze, unable to answer his question as she sat on the forest floor.

She willed herself back into the moment, shaking her head and grounding herself in Cara’s worried brown eyes. After a moment she realized she was fine, that she had only again been imagining the wound in her gut, that none of what had happened in the cave had been real. Gideon was dead, the Darksaber was safe, and neither could harm the academy or the younglings it housed.

“Nothing,” Sam finally managed to say. “I’m fine, it...it was just my imagination. Thought I saw something in there but it was nothing.”

She did her best to play it coolly so as not to cause any unnecessary alarm, and somehow it worked. Cara eyed her skeptically but Cal’s concern seemed to melt away, though Sam suspected it would come up again later, once they’d completed their mission.

“Alright,” the red-headed Jedi said. “We’re not finding anything here. I think it’s about time we head back to the ship before it gets dark.”

“We’ll be right behind you,” Cara promised. He took off, leaving them there alone. When he was out of earshot, she gently confronted her partner. “Sammy, what was that?”

Sam anxiously avoided her probing brown eyes as she stood up straight. “Nothing, Cara, I told you.”

“I heard you scream, Sam. I had to practically drag you out of there. That’s not nothing.”

“Guess I just got freaked out by the wildlife,” the Jedi lied. “I’m fine, babe. I promise.”

She casually brushed past her to follow Cal, feeling Cara’s concerned look boring into her back the whole way to the Mantis.

~

Sam avoided her partner’s worried gazes as much as possible in the following day and a half it took to finish checking out Dagobah and make it back to the academy. Once they were back, she finally recounted the incident to the other Jedi, and Luke belatedly revealed that he’d known about the cave from his own visits to the swampy planet.

No one seemed overly concerned about the meaning of her vision of Gideon. After all, he was long dead, and the vision was just the manifestation of the Dark Side most likely to have an effect on her. But they all agreed to meditate on the other vision, the one of the burning temple, in the meantime. If it was indeed a glimpse into a possible future, they wanted to be as careful as they could in sensing any further hints that it was coming to fruition.

But almost as concerning to Sam personally, aside from the future implications of what she’d seen, was what she’d felt in herself in the moment. She was used to fear. That she could handle and had been handling since becoming a Jedi Master. But the darkness of the cave had filled her, and she couldn’t quite shake the anger, the hate, she’d left it with.

Sam tried to work through it as she found some solitude by a small lake near the temple. With her thoughts back in the cave, she habitually tossed a rock halfway across the water, only to conjure it back to her hand with the Force just before it splashed into the lake. She concluded that the visions had been a warning to the Jedi, something they had to work out together, but the cave had seen fit to give her a test of her own as well. And the longer the storm of hatred consumed her mind, the more it felt like she was failing the test.

She heaved the rock angrily across the lake once again, but her focus was interrupted before she could recall it.

“What’s wrong?” Cara’s casual voice came from behind her, and the rock splashed somewhat pathetically into the water.

Sam turned around to see her partner bending down to pick up a new stone. “Why do you assume something’s wrong?”

“Because you always do this when something’s bugging you,” Cara said, winding up and tossing the new rock herself. Sam reached out to it through the Force and brought it back, gliding it gently back into her partner’s hand.

“I do?”

“You do,” the mercenary said, and upon further consideration Sam had to admit she was right. It was a habit that went back to their days on Bogano, the two of them performing the same routine across an endless valley whenever one of them was particularly stressed. Though the first time it had happened, the Jedi had simply been showing off. “You know, for someone who can read other people’s minds, I find it very interesting that you can never seem to read your own.”

Sam chuckled lightly. “Well that’s what I have you for.”

“Correct. But I can only read the general mood of your mind, not the actual thoughts. So spit it out, Jedi.”

Cara chucked the rock again, and Sam brought it back without taking her eyes off her. She explained that she’d lied about nothing happening in the cave, that she’d seen things inside that had been messing with her head ever since.

“Luke said that Master Yoda called it a domain of evil. And that he was tempted by the Dark Side there,” Sam said. “I think that’s what happened to me, too.”

“Wait, I thought _I_ was the one tempting you to the Dark Side?” Cara asked, only half joking.

“You’re not the Dark Side. Just the opposite I’d say, actually,” the Jedi said with a smile, glad to note that some of the dark feelings inside her were already beginning to subside with the other woman around. “No, the Dark Side is all about....hate.”

“So, you...saw something you hate?”

“Yeah,” Sam admitted, looking to the ground. “Gideon.”

Cara was taken aback, but only momentarily. “Gideon’s dead, Sammy. He’s gone.”

“I know. But he tried to kill you. He tried to kill everyone I love, and I hated him, and I killed him,” the Jedi said, feeling the anger boil up again. “And...I’d do it again. And I’d do it to whoever or whatever tries it next because I’ll hate them just as much.”

Sam walked away to sit down on a log nearby and peered broodingly out over the lake. Cara followed her with the same troubled eyes she’d sported for most of the previous two days.

“Why was there not an ‘if’ in that sentence?” she asked anxiously.

“That’s the other thing I saw. The academy, burning. Only Luke and R2 left,” Sam confessed as hot tears filled her eyes at the thought of losing everyone she cared about. Cara. Dash. Cal, Mando, Cere. Jacen, Merrin, Greez. The clone baby and the rest of the younglings. All of them. Whoever it was that threatened them, she hated that person already. “I can’t let that happen, Cara. I won’t.”

Cara knelt down to look her in the eye seriously.

“Sam. You don’t know what is going to happen, Force visions or not. We’re safe here. That’s not just something we tell these kids’ parents,” she told her with full conviction. “No one is going to try anything. And if they do, _I’ll_ be the one channeling the Dark Side. Got it?”

_It’s not that simple_ , Sam wanted to say. But looking into Cara’s eyes, filled with resolve and love and strength, she couldn’t see any reason why it wasn’t. The Jedi of the past had failed to foresee or to stop their own destruction, in part because of their hubris. Because they believed they alone had the power to protect the galaxy.

Maybe all Sam had to do to keep her family safe was to accept that she couldn’t do it alone. Maybe the hatred and anger wouldn’t consume her if she knew she wasn’t the only one carrying that burden.

“Got it,” she agreed, and Cara smiled.

“Good.” The mercenary stood, bringing her partner up with her and into a hug.

And just like that, all the hate in Sam’s heart melted away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't think too hard about the implications here. This is one situation where I'm glad nothing I write will ever be canon.


	5. Krayt Spit

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Went Dark on the last one so how about we lighten things up?

The day Dash turned thirteen, Sam finally began to understand why people back home on Alderaan had always told her she needed to apologize to her mother more often.

She hadn’t at all been prepared for the boy’s change in demeanor once he became a teenager. He was still small for his age and had never once been a problem in the slightest, so there was really no way to see it coming. But for whatever reason, the young padawan seemed to grow an attitude overnight. And along with it, a salty vocabulary.

The latter made its first appearance rather abruptly one day as Dash was expressing to his master his displeasure with being made to stay behind at the academy instead of going on a mission with the _Mantis_ crew. He’d blown off a day’s worth of chores, and Sam had tried calmly explaining that he had a responsibility to everyone else at the temple to get his work done like the rest of them, but clearly the boy had a different read on the situation.

“But it’s bantha shit,” he whined in the same young boy’s voice that made it hard to believe he was as old as he was, and Sam’s eyebrows shot up in shock.

“Hey! Language!” she chastised, attempting to make it sound authentic despite finding his words more amusing than offensive. She shook her head and muttered, “Been spending too much time with these two.”

Sam turned to glare behind her at the table in the ship’s common area, where Cara and the Mandalorian diverted their gazes away from hers and back to their game of sabacc.

“It’s....krayt spit?” Dash tried again, substituting the more innocent version of the curse he’d uttered previously, and again the elder Jedi had to bite back her laughter.

“It’s krayt spit, _Master_ ,” she corrected, trying her damnedest not to smile.

“It’s kr--”

“That was a joke, Bogling-3,” Sam said dryly, cutting him off and then sighing. “Go to your bunk, we’ll talk about this tomorrow.”

The teenager relented, turning and retreating to his room. His master shook her head exhaustedly before taking a seat at the sabacc table to watch the game unfold. The Mandalorian watched her as she pinched the bridge of her nose in tired frustration.

“Parenting. Am I right?” he said, and Sam could only look at him with a scrunched face.

“What?”

“Been there,” he continued, tossing a credit chip into the pot. “Just glad I missed the angsty teenage years with mine.”

Sam opened and closed her mouth, trying to work out just what the hell he was talking about. His “kid” was technically more than 50 years old, but still little more than a baby in terms of development.

“How does that even--”

“It makes sense if you don’t think about it.”

“Really doesn’t,” Cara chimed in as she revealed her winning hand in the game.

“Either way, please don’t mention krayt spit again,” Mando requested.

“Why?” the Jedi asked.

“Don’t wanna talk about it.”

“You really don’t want to know,” the mercenary assured her.

At this point Sam’s head was spinning. “Okay. I’m going to go now,” she announced, getting up from the table again. But before she made it out of the common room, she turned back. “Which one of you taught him that?”

Cara and Mando each pointed accusingly at the other.

“That’s what I thought,” Sam said with a roll of her eyes.

She left the ship’s common area and started to make for the temple but on the way out ran into Cere, seated peacefully on the _Mantis_ ’s boarding ramp and watching the sunset over the academy. The younger Jedi asked for permission to join her and when granted it proceeded to tell the former master about her troubles with Dash. Cere no longer took on padawans of her own, but the woman still had plenty of wisdom to share and Sam often sought it out when really at a loss. Cal’s methods were ingrained in her, but Cere saw things differently in some respects and a fresh take was sometimes all it took to fix a problem. She hoped this was one of those situations.

“I don’t know what his deal is,” Sam said after explaining the blossoming attitude problem with her padawan. “It’s like one day he was this sweet little boy and the next he’s some angsty teen? Can having a birthday really change somebody’s whole personality?”

Cere shrugged. “It’s been known to happen.”

“Maybe I should read his mind...” the silver-haired Jedi wondered aloud. “You know, see what the heck is going on in there.”

“Or you could, I dunno, try to talk to him?” suggested the former master. “Just a thought.”

Sam scrunched her face in playful disgust. “I don’t know about that. Talking to teenage boys was never something I enjoyed.”

The elder Jedi chuckled and nodded, recognizing the real insecurity behind Sam’s joke. She simply didn’t know what to say to him, had no experience mentoring a kid that age or dealing with the drama involved.

“Then I’ll offer you a little bit of Jedi Master wisdom that I think still applies today,” Cere said, and Sam sat up at attention. “Dash may still look and sound like a little boy to you, but every day he’s seeing himself get a little older and a little stronger with the Force. In my experience, padawans that age are eager to prove themselves. Perhaps even over-eager. If you ask me, Dash is just looking for an opportunity to prove to you that he’s not a little kid anymore. That he’s ready for something bigger.”

“Well, when you say it like that it seems so obvious,” Sam said with a smile and a shake of her head. Of course that was the problem. Dash had been learning and passing every test with flying colors for nearly two years, but he’d rarely been given the opportunity to really show what he could do. She’d been blind not to see that he’d been growing tired of waiting for such an opportunity. “Thanks, Cere.”

“Any time, kiddo.”

The old woman patted her on the shoulder and Sam stood to leave, but an idea struck her.

“Think it’s too late to change the flight plans for tomorrow?” she asked.

“What’ve you got in mind?”

Sam grinned. “Somewhere a little colder.”

Cere hesitated a moment, then caught on and matched her smile.

“I’ll talk to Greez.”

~

Sam was pleasantly surprised the next morning to find out that her padawan had gotten up early to do his neglected chores, plus a few others’. She couldn’t be sure if it was just his way of trying to belatedly earn his way into the mission or if he’d actually felt remorse for his poor behavior.

Not until they were on the _Mantis_ and headed for the mission, at which point he came to her in the makeshift training area with his head hung in shame.

“I’m sorry for being a brat,” he said, shyly but sincerely. “And for cussing.”

Sam did her best to hide her surprise. “Well that’s...very mature of you to say.”

“Cara talked to me about it,” he admitted.

“She did? Huh.” _Everyone’s full of surprises today_ , she thought. She put her hand on his shoulder and waited for him to look her in the eye. “Well, I’m sorry too, Dash.”

“What for, Master?”

“For not seeing how grown up you’ve become. You’re getting so smart and so strong with the Force. I should have realized that I can’t treat you like a kid anymore,” Sam said, then smirked. “And as long as you do your chores like you’re supposed to, I don’t think I’ll have any reason to, huh?”

Dash nodded vigorously. “I’ll do them.”

“I know. But in the meantime...I think you’re due for a new adventure.”

“What kind of adventure?” he asked, eyes wide.

Sam backed a few steps away from him and stood up straight before calling across the room at the other master/padawan pair aboard the _Mantis_.

“Spectre-7, Master Kestis, could you join us please?” she asked, and in seconds Jacen stood next to Dash and Cal did the same to her. “Have you boys been enjoying your lightsaber training?”

“Yes, Master,” the boys said in unison.

“Glad to hear it. You’re both getting quite good,” Sam observed, in an obviously rehearsed tone. “Aren’t they, Master Kestis?”

“Indeed, Master Cardell,” Cal agreed with the same tone.

“Getting a bit old for the sticks, though,” she said, referring to the wooden rods they’d been using to learn the basics of lightsaber combat. “Think it’s time we let them graduate to training sabers.”

“I concur, Master Cardell,” the elder Jedi master said.

The padawans’ eyes lit up.

“And you know what’s right around the corner after that, boys?”

“Real lightsabers!” the green-haired boy said, practically bouncing with anticipation.

“Right you are, Spectre-7,” Sam confirmed brightly.

“But Master...” Dash said, “we don’t _have_ real lightsabers.”

Sam’s goofy smile fell with the response, which she’d expected.

“You....they don’t have...” She made a show of looking around in mock confusion. “Master Kestis?”

“Hm?”

“Did we forget something?”

“I believe we did, Master Cardell.”

“What are we gonna do?” Sam asked through her teeth.

Cal shrugged dramatically. “I guess we could always see if Greez would be willing to make a stop on Ilum.”

Sam made sure to ignore the way the boys turned to look at each other excitedly, recognizing the name of the world where the Jedi found the kyber crystals for their lightsabers, as she refuted him. “Nah, you know Greez. He hates to make last-minute changes.”

“You’re right...” Cal said, rubbing his chin in mock deep thought. “Maybe if they bribe him?”

“Or mind-trick him?”

“We haven’t taught them that yet.”

“Oh right.”

“We could just ask him first!” Dash broke up their routine impatiently.

Sam and Cal looked at him, then acted as if they were continuing their conversation non-verbally.

“Alright,” she finally said. “But make sure you have a backup bribe ready.”

“Let us know how it goes,” Cal said, following his former padawan from the training room as the kids began plotting. Once they were out of earshot of the boys, they both fell into laughter. “Sometimes I wish I’d had you around at that age. You would have been so much fun to mess with like that.”

“I absolutely would have been,” Sam agreed. “I can’t wait to hear what they come up with.”

The Jedi masters laughed all the way to the common area, where the rest of the crew was waiting eagerly to find out what the padawans would offer in return for a stop on the planet they were already headed to.

~

Having the whole crew (aside from Mando, who’d stayed behind because of “bad experiences with ice planets”) along for the trip to Ilum was, Sam had to admit, a little overkill.

It hadn’t been necessary for the ruse -- the boys would have believed they were going on a seeking mission even if only part of the crew had been along. But when she’d explained the plan to them all, they each jumped at the opportunity to go along. The kyber crystal retrieval was one of the most important rites of passage in Jedi training, and it only felt right to make it a family affair for both Dash and Jacen.

Sam, Cal, and Cere had explained the mission to them and sent them off into the treacherous ice caves, confident that the padawans would together be able to handle anything they might encounter. As long as they trusted the Force and each other, they would come back with crystals in hand in a matter of hours. And very soon after that, they'd use them to construct their own lightsabers.

In the meantime, the rest of the crew sat around the common area enjoying some food and some downtime. Before long, the conversation found its way back to Dash’s change in attitude, which led to stories of how much more poorly-behaved Sam had been in her early teen years.

“In my defense, most of the dumb things I did were just attempts to impress a girl,” she said with a nod toward Cara, who sat beside her on the couch with her feet up in Sam’s lap.

“Did it work?” asked Merrin.

They all looked to the dark-haired Alderaanian, including her partner, who sported a smirk.

Cara just smirked right back. “To be determined.”

“Ahh,” Sam exclaimed with a dismissive hand wave as the rest laughed.

“Sounds like you must have kept your parents pretty busy,” Cere posited.

“Oh, they were saints,” the Jedi said, feeling a slight tightening in her chest at the memory of her parents. “And that’s not just coming from me. Everyone in town loved them.”

“What did they do when they weren’t chasing you around?” asked Cal.

“My father was a teacher. A professor, actually.”

“What did he teach?”

“Literature. He believed there was no better way to communicate than through a good story. And the older I get...the more I think he was right about that,” Sam said wistfully, thankful for her ability to glean people’s stories without even needing to hear them speak.

“And your mother?” Cere inquired.

“She owned and ran a restaurant.”

“That’s putting it very modestly,” Cara chimed in. “Jolee was the most popular chef in Crevasse City.”

The Latero pilot and resident chef laughed out loud. “Well, the meiloorun sure fell far from that tree!”

Sam chuckled herself. “You’re tellin’ me, Greez,” she agreed, under no illusions about her lack of skill in the kitchen.

“What about your parents, Cara?” Merrin asked when the laughter subsided.

“Politicians,” the mercenary replied. “Not quite as well-loved. Or as saintly.”

“Ah, they weren’t so bad,” Sam said.

Cara sat up to lay her head on her partner’s shoulder. “Yeah, if only they’d thought the same about you,” she said, inviting another round of laughter at Sam’s expense.

“Had a hard enough time impressing you, darling,” the Jedi said, placing a kiss on the top of her head. “Never had an interest in much more than that.”

When the food and conversation ran out as the crew waited for the padawans to return, Sam and Cara volunteered to clean up and wash the dishes, a task that usually would have fallen to the boys. The Jedi didn’t mind the chore. It brought her back to all the times they’d done the same together at Jolee’s, made her feel young again.

Cara’s mind didn’t seem to be in the same place, though.

“He’s gonna be okay, right?” she asked suddenly of her partner’s padawan.

“Of course,” Sam said without hesitation. “Just takes some time to get anywhere in there.”

“It’s been hours already,” the mercenary pointed out. “And it’s getting dark.”

Sam paused the dish-washing to look at her, finding concern in her dark eyes. “You’re...really worried?”

“The two of you worry me enough when you’re off doing Jedi things _together_ ,” Cara said. “Him doing something alone is downright terrifying.”

“He’s not alone, he’s with Jacen.”

“In no way does that make me feel better,” she said with an eye roll, and Sam had to laugh. Jacen was a highly capable padawan and would one day be a great Jedi like his father, but the boy was incredibly daring, bordering on reckless.

“He’s gonna be fine, Cara. They both are. I promise,” Sam reassured her as she wrapped her arms around her. “You know, it’s cute when you’re worried about someone other than me.”

“Oh I’m sure,” Cara scoffed.

The Jedi chuckled quietly as she held her. “He said you talked to him about the cussing thing?” she asked after a long moment of silence.

“I did.”

“I was gonna do that, you know.” Sam finally released her and Cara shrugged one shoulder.

“Thought it would be better coming from me.”

The tall Alderaanian raised an eyebrow, fairly certain she knew where this was going. “Why’s that?”

“Because I....might have been the one that taught him,” Cara admitted with a coy smile.

“Oh, no spit?” The grin plastered across Sam’s face was short-lived as Cara punched her in the arm.

They went back to quietly doing the dishes, and Sam's mind wandered back to the conversation with the crew. She wondered what her parents would think about her now, if they were still around to see what she'd become. Would she go to them for advice about Dash, instead of the other Jedi Masters? Would they spoil him as if he were their grandson? Something told her they would have.

Cara must have been either reading her mind or thinking about the same thing herself, because she leaned into her partner and quietly said, "They'd be so proud of you, you know."

Sam tried to smile though the tears that sprang to her eyes. "Yeah, I know."

"I'm proud of you too."

"Right back atcha, babe," she said, resting her head on Cara's shoulder.

Seconds later Cal’s voice called to them.

“They’re back!”

Abandoning the dishes, they joined the rest of the crew in welcoming the padawans back onto the ship. Unsurprisingly, the boys were too excited about their discoveries to bother accepting the various offers of blankets and hot drinks to warm them up.

Instead, Dash walked right up to his master, his face red with cold but smiling ear to ear as he clutched his gloved hands together in front of him. Sam proudly matched his smile as he held them up to her.

“Let’s see it, buddy.”

Slowly he opened his hands, revealing a crystal no more than two inches long, pale blue and shimmering. Just as hers had been.

A few hours later the young Alderaanian padawan had completed construction on his own lightsaber, happily showing off the sleek metal handle and the shining blue blade to the crew. As she watched him, and saw the impressed faces of the rest of the crew -- their family -- Sam couldn't help but smile.

And she realized, despite the recent krayt spit between them, she'd never been more proud of anyone in her life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not me writing Mando's early season 2 traumas into this in a completely nonsensical way...


	6. Disaster

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not gonna lie, this is just straight up angst. Another flashback kind of thing I've had kicking around in my head for a while. Hope the timeline is not too confusing. Also, I wrote the first couple of paragraphs of the second section before I read Light of the Jedi, and now that I have I realize it doesn't quite work. But I like that part so I'm not changing it.
> 
> Anyway, have fun/I'm sorry.

**_~ 0 BBY ~_ **

“Again!” Cal’s voice echoed around the spacious Jedi camp on Bogano, his frustration with his newest padawan evident in his tone. “Do it right this time. An Inquisitor will kill you in a second at this rate.”

_At this rate I would let them_ , Sam thought bitterly as she picked herself up off the unforgiving ground. This Jedi thing was turning out to be much more difficult than she ever expected. Not that she had really known what to expect that day she left Alderaan. Cal and Cere hadn’t been all that specific in the moment. But she had thought the training would be more about learning to use her Force-pushing powers on command and the like, not so much about meditating all the time and getting herself knocked down while learning to duel “Master” Kestis with the spare lightsaber.

Not that she was ungrateful. Truly, she was having a great time overall. The crew of the _Mantis_ was an interesting one, and there was hardly a dull moment. For nearly a year Sam had been traveling the galaxy with them, and still every time Greez made the jump to lightspeed her heart also made a jump of its own. Her life was exciting in a way it had rarely been on Alderaan -- dangerous at times, yes, but mostly Sam was just thrilled to be along for the ride.

“You have to think ahead, Sam. Feel the Force. Trust it,” Cal counseled, his voice now more calm than previously. “You’re doing brilliantly with the saber against the training droids, but that will only get you so far. It’s infinitely more difficult to fight another Force-user.”

“Yes, Master.”

Sam took a deep, centering breath, feeling the Force all around her and inside her as he’d advised. She focused and listened to what it told her, and what Cal’s mind was telling her. Lately she had noticed that other people’s voices were often making their way into her head when she focused with the Force, even when they weren’t opening their mouths to speak. She would have to ask him about that later. But in the meantime her master lunged toward her with a series of strikes, and Sam effortlessly blocked each one as if Cal had been warning her where and when they would land.

“Yes! That’s it,” Cal praised. “Much better. You were letting the Force guide you, not your eyes. Let’s go again.”

They went again, and again and again. The training lasted until Sam was fully out of breath and no longer able to connect with the Force. But Cal was satisfied for once, and that delighted her. Even Cere, Greez, and Merrin, who’d all gathered to watch training because there was not much else to do on this planet, seemed impressed by how quickly she was improving. She tried not to let it get to her head. The quickest way to come crashing back down from one of these highs was to let herself believe she had something mastered.

After taking a moment to catch her breath, Sam stood to join Cal and Cere as they discussed how her training was going.

“Well done today, Padawan,” Cere told her. “It seems once you focus, you’re a natural at anticipating your opponent’s next moves. Not an easy thing to learn so quickly.”

“Thanks. Actually, I kind of wanted to ask about that,” Sam said. “Is it a normal Jedi ability to hear or...I guess, sense, other people’s thoughts?”

The two elder Jedi looked quizzically at her and then at each other.

“I-I mean, maybe that’s not what it is,” the Alderaanian went on without waiting for a response, suddenly embarrassed for having brought it up. “It’s just, it feels like that’s what’s happ--”

Out of nowhere, Sam felt a searing pain in her chest as if she’d been struck by a laser blast. She gasped, clutching her hand over her heart as Cal and Cere looked on in confusion and then concern. Cal rushed forward to catch her as her knees buckled beneath her.

“Sam? What’s going on?” he implored, but she couldn’t answer. Not just because she had no idea, but because she seemed incapable of speaking or even breathing.

All she could feel, all that existed, was pain. Pain in her chest, pain in her head, and...somehow, pain very far away. Half a galaxy away, it seemed. But how was that possible? How could pain that was happening to someone else whole sectors away make her feel like she was dying?

“Merrin, get the medpac!” Cere ordered as Cal eased the padawan down to lie in the grass.

BD-1 hopped down from his back and began to scan her. Cal went to stand, but instead he grabbed his own chest, wincing in pain and dropping to a knee on the ground beside Sam.

“Cal? What is--” Before she could get the question out, Cere was seized by the same sensation that had caused the other two Jedi to go down. She managed to stay on her feet, forcing herself to breathe through it as Merrin and Greez showed back up beside them all, wearing horrified faces.

Voices filled Sam’s head. The worried ones all around her, and the echoes of distant ones she didn’t recognize. Something inside her seemed to know them, though, and she tried her hardest to listen. But there were too many. It was terrible and overwhelming, and soon the voices beside her on Bogano faded altogether. And the light of the planet’s twin suns followed.

The next thing she knew, Sam was waking up on the ground where she’d fallen, the concerned faces of her crewmates all hovering above her. They all seemed to sigh in relief as she came to, looking around in confusion before sitting up.

“What....what happened?” the Alderaanian asked, unsure if she truly wanted to know the answer. The pain she’d felt before was gone, as were the voices that had cried out in her mind. But something lingered still. An awful emptiness. A foreboding dread.

Cere and Cal shared an apprehensive look. The dark-skinned woman nodded, and Cal spoke softly to his padawan.

“There was a disturbance in the Force, Sam,” he said. “We all felt it, but for some reason it hit you the hardest.”

“Does that...happen a lot?” asked Sam. They shook their heads sorrowfully.

“No. Not on that scale, anyway,” explained Cere. “The last time I felt something that strong....nearly all the Jedi in the galaxy were killed...”

“I fear something terrible has happened,” Cal added, his eyes dropping to stare sadly at the ground.

Sam’s mind raced. Something terrible? What could have happened that would be equally as terrible as the Jedi purge had been? And why would she, the one among them least attuned to the Force, have been the one to feel the effects enough to have passed out? She thought of the voices, the far away ones that had seemed so....familiar...

_No..._

“Alderaan...” Sam breathed. “I think...I think something happened on Alderaan.”

**_~ one year later~_**

Sam was no scholar of galactic history, but if she were to venture a guess, she’d say it was unlikely that there had ever been an event in which every person on every planet remembered exactly where they were when they heard about it.

Or so she _would_ have guessed, until the day her home world was destroyed. The Alderaan Disaster was an event so traumatic that it had stopped the entire galaxy in its tracks. And for the past year it seemed that everyone the _Mantis_ crew encountered could recite exactly what they’d been doing the moment the news had reached them.

Sam hated that fact. Even when people weren’t outright talking about the Disaster, it felt like they were constantly thinking about it around her. And as her telepathic powers grew stronger, she began to hear and sense those thoughts more and more. She was desperate to learn to control it, if for no other reason than to be able to turn her senses off from others’ thoughts and finally know the relative peace of her own mind again.

Not that the past year had been anything close to peaceful for her. In the first several days after the event, while the crew was still trying to confirm what Sam had suspected about the disturbance in the Force, Cal and Cere had been cautious with her. And after they received confirmation that Alderaan had been completely obliterated, they allowed her a short period to grieve openly for her lost home and loved ones. But that hadn’t lasted long.

Being a Jedi meant letting go of everything one feared losing, or in her case, everything that had already been lost. So her master had insisted after a certain point that Sam had to do just that. Let go. Move on. If nothing else, try to forget. A lot of the time she was too tired to argue with him, but some days she couldn’t help but push back against the harsh notion.

And today, exactly a year since the Disaster, was one of those days.

Sam had been completely unable to sleep the whole night prior, knowing what the next day was. She’d spent hours tossing and turning in her uncomfortable bunk on the _Mantis II_ , her thoughts consumed by memories of everyone she’d lost a year ago. Her mother, her Cara, her friends and neighbors, her favorite teachers at the academy and the regulars at Jolee’s. Even people she disliked or never knew. Her heart ached for all of them. She mourned for all of them. And Cal wanted her to just let it all go? She didn’t know how she could ever do that.

Most of the time his lectures on the subject centered around the vital need for her to make sure the loss of all those people wasn’t leading her to anger and hate. Those emotions were a one-way ticket to the Dark Side, she knew. And in her worst moments, Sam did feel them. She hated the Empire for taking everything she’d ever loved, and she wanted to make them pay. She wanted to get involved in the war for real, not just on the fringes of it, and fight back alongside the Rebels. But revenge was not the Jedi way, nor in the spirit of nonviolence her father had once preached, so she always focused hard on diffusing the anger and the hatred before they boiled over.

On the anniversary of the Disaster though, Cal’s advice was different. And it wasn’t going over very well.

“What do I always tell you, Sam?” he asked rhetorically. He’d already been lecturing for a while about being distracted during meditation, but the lesson had since turned to the subject of Alderaan. “You have to trust in the Force. It guides all things. I know you feel guilty about having survived. But if that’s what the Force has willed for you, it means you have a greater part to play at some point, that your destiny is--”

“A greater part to play?!” the Alderaanian snapped. “Is that all this is? What, we’re all just characters in some story and _everyone_ I ever knew and loved wasn’t important enough to the plot? They’re not powerful enough, so it’s fine if they all just die at the hands of the Empire?”

“That’s not what I--”

“If that’s what the Force is all about, then I don’t want this anymore,” Sam went on angrily. “If I only survived because of some thing’s plan to make me a Jedi, I _don’t_ want to be one.”

She stormed out of the ship’s training area without waiting for a response from the stunned Jedi master, then locked herself in her bunk and prayed no one would attempt to speak to her again. Sam sat on her bed with her knees folded up to her chest, hugging them and sobbing into her arms until she could no longer sit up at all. It had been a while since she’d lost control to this extent, since she’d had to collapse and shut out the rest of the crew completely. Forgetting and letting go had started to get easier, but on a day she was all but forced to think about the loss, it was all coming back up rather violently.

Sam couldn’t tell how long she’d laid there in her bunk before the knock on the door came, but the grumbling in her stomach that followed told her it must have been quite a while.

“Sam? May I come in?” To her surprise, the voice on the other side of the door wasn’t Cal’s or Cere’s, but Merrin’s accented tones. “I brought you some food. You really should eat.”

The Alderaanian didn’t answer.

“I can leave it out here if you want,” Merrin offered, but finally Sam sat up, wiping her eyes.

“No,” she croaked. “You can come in.”

The door to Sam’s bunk slid open and the Nightsister entered, holding a plate of Shaak roast -- Greez had made her favorite. Sam accepted the plate from her but just stared at the food. Despite the hunger she felt, her appetite was nowhere to be found.

“You don’t feel like eating, do you?” Merrin guessed but received no response. “That’s okay. You will survive.”

Sam couldn’t help but chuckle dryly at Merrin’s practical take. “Yeah, apparently that’s what I’m destined to do.”

“I did not mean that as mockery of you,” said the gray-skinned woman as she took a seat next to her. “Merely speaking from experience. You’re not the only survivor on this ship, Sam Cardell.”

With her words, Sam stopped picking at the food and looked over at her. She felt a wave of shame and guilt. Of course she wasn’t the only one. Merrin, Cal, Cere -- they were _all_ survivors, each of them one of the few left of their kind. The two Jedi had survived not only the original purge of the Light Side’s Force-users at the end of the Clone Wars, but also years of being hunted by the Empire’s Inquisitors. And Merrin’s fellow Nightsisters had all been massacred years ago during those same wars. Everyone on the _Mantis_ knew what it was like to lose almost everything they’d ever known. That pain wasn’t exclusive to Sam.

“I’m sorry,” Merrin said. “I do not mean to make you feel guilty. You have every right to mourn, Sam. Probably even more than the rest of us.”

_Not according to Cal_ , Sam thought. But Cal wasn’t here. And she was already mourning anyway. Might as well let it all out.

“You can talk to me. I’ll keep it just between us,” Merrin promised.

Sam sighed and took a minute to gather all her racing thoughts from the day.

“I should have been there....” she said finally. “I should have been there with them.”

“If you’d been there you would be dead as well. There’s nothing you could have done.”

“I could have _been there_ ,” Sam argued, summing up the cause of all the guilt she’d felt for a year. “They shouldn’t have had to die alone.”

Tears began to flow from her eyes at the thought, a thought that had plagued her for a year now. Cara and her mother being erased from existence, never knowing what was happening or why. They’d died likely still holding onto the belief that Sam would one day return. But she hadn’t. She never would.

“They?” asked Merrin. “Your parents?”

“My mother,” Sam corrected, once again hugging her knees to her chest. “And....and Cara...”

The name hung in the air for a moment before the Nightsister asked, “Who was Cara?”

“I...I don’t think I wanna talk about it,” said the Jedi.

“I understand,” Merrin assured her. “Do you mind if I talk instead?”

“Sure.”

Merrin leaned back on the wall as she took a moment to choose her words. She was by no means an uptight person, but Sam had to note that it was rare to see her in such a relaxed posture.

“I was only a child when the war was first brought to Dathomir,” she began finally, her voice contemplative, eyes staring off distantly. “Not old enough to understand what war even was, but old enough to know it was a terrible thing. By the time the rest of my people were slaughtered and our temple brought to ruins, I’d learned a little more. I’d learned about surviving and fighting in the war, but also about how much my family, my Sisters, meant to me. How much we had all meant to each other.

“To this day I’m not sure how I managed not to die,” Merrin said heavily. “I suppose I had done a good enough job of pretending to be dead that the droids didn’t bother to check for sure. When it was all over, I expected to find that others had done the same but...I was the only one. I thought, ‘There’s no way this is real. It must be an elaborate spell or a hex.’ But it was real. It happened.”

Sam knew that feeling -- the denial, the desire to explain away the horror of the truth. Sometimes it even manifested in dreams of being back on Alderaan, safe and surrounded by everyone she loved. Waking up from those dreams, she always felt like the world was ending all over again.

“I had to bury them all myself,” the Nightsister continued, working hard to keep her voice steady to tell Sam the story. “My mother, my friends...even Illyana...”

Just as it had after Sam had mentioned Cara’s name, an uncomfortable silence filled the small cabin. The Jedi was willing herself not to hear Merrin’s thoughts before they became words, but she could still feel her emotions as if they were her own. And they might as well have been, for as similar as they were to Sam’s own feelings.

“She was my closest companion,” Merrin said, a wistful smile settling in on her face. “We would sneak away to the swamps together, off to experiment with potions or spells. I could talk to her about anything and listen to anything she said....I thought we would grow old together...”

The smile disappeared as the Nightsister’s eyes grew glassy.

“More than anyone else I lost, I couldn’t accept that she was gone,” Merrin continued through the tears. “I kept going to those places we used to go, just trying to feel her presence. I was talking to myself like I was talking to her. I even tried to use spells to bring her back.”

Merrin laughed lightly and Sam joined her. “That doesn’t sound like a good idea.”

“No,” she said, laughing some more and shaking her head. “It really was not.”

“Well, I get it,” Sam assured her. “If I knew any spells right now I’d probably be trying them too.”

Silence creeped in again but much more comfortably this time, as Merrin seemed to give Sam the floor to talk. Until that moment, she hadn’t known she wanted to. But after a year -- almost two years, really -- of never even mentioning her favorite person in the galaxy, the words practically begged to be said.

“I thought Cara and I would grow old together too,” the Jedi said softly. “Even after I ended up in this crew, a part of me still thought that I’d get back and...I don’t know, drag her along with me through this journey. I mean, from the day we met we were practically inseparable. That was supposed to last forever...”

Sam’s mind filled with memories of endless days spent with Cara on Alderaan, of all the best times of her life. Every ill-conceived adventure, every conversation that began at sundown and ended at sunrise, every perfect moment spent wrapped up in each other’s arms. She smiled as she shared them with Merrin, happy to finally be able to let someone else know how special it had all been.

“You think _I’m_ good at reading people’s minds,” Sam said with amusement near the end of the stories. “She could read me like a book. Always got me to laugh, always cheered me up when I was sad or upset, always knew how to motivate me. Knew how to...press every one of my buttons....”

The Alderaanian paused. The happy memories had taken a while to tell, but eventually they all led up to the same time and place. A time and place, a memory, that she returned to in her dreams more often than she would have liked. No matter how many times she tried to change the outcome, it always ended the same way.

Sam’s voice was quiet again as she told Merrin the end of their story.

“The last time I saw her was just a normal night. The restaurant was busy and I was running around trying to get to everybody. She was there helping for a while but she had somewhere to be the next day and had to get home.” Sam shook her head as more tears somehow formed in her eyes even though she thought she’d run out. “I remember I was...holding a whole tray full of dishes, couldn’t even stop to give her a hug...She gave me a kiss and said she’d be back for dinner the next night. But the next day the stormtroopers came. I had to leave without saying goodbye, and now I’ll never....now I’ll never see her again...”

It was a truth she’d known for a year now, but it had never felt quite as real as it did just then, when she said it out loud for the first time. The tears came hard and fast again and soon she was a sobbing, choking mess. Merrin moved closer and held her until it subsided, something Sam hadn’t realized she had been needing desperately for a year. She’d needed all of this, really. And it didn’t even feel like she was doing something against the Jedi way. Letting it all out like this was surely going to be much more helpful in letting go than just ignoring her feelings for the rest of her life.

When she was finally in control of herself again she sat up and thanked the Nightsister for coming to her aid and for listening.

“This is the best I’ve felt about everything in...well, since it happened,” Sam said. “Didn’t think that’d be possible today.”

“Talking about it helps,” Merrin said knowingly. “It keeps them alive. Their spirits. You disliked it earlier when Cal said you have a different destiny as a survivor, and with reason, but he is right in a way. Their stories may have ended, but as long as there are people like you that can tell those stories and pass them along...they’ll never really be gone. That’s your responsibility now, Sam Cardell.”

Sam had picked up quite a few new responsibilities since joining the crew, but this one seemed far and away the most important. And the easiest.

“I have to keep them alive,” she said, nodding as if getting used to the idea. “Alright. I can do that.”

“I know you can,” Merrin confirmed. “And I’m always here to listen.”

_**~ nine years later ~** _

“I take it that’s her.”

Sam was staring off at the trio of new passengers on the _Mantis_ when Merrin’s voice startled her from behind. It had been about six hours at most since she’d learned that Cara was still alive, and she was still unsure how to process it. Just the sight of her, sitting there getting the lay of the land from Cal and Cere with the Mandalorian and the kid by her side, made Sam feel like she was in some sort of spice dream.

“Nothin’ gets by you, does it?” the tall Jedi muttered, unable to pull her eyes away. It would have been hard for Merrin not to make the connection at this point, considering she’d popped up out of nowhere just as the two Alderaanians had been about to share their first kiss in 11 years.

“How is that possible?”

“She wasn’t there,” Sam said, shaking her head because she still couldn’t even begin to believe it. “She’d already left Alderaan to join the Alliance. Got off-world a month before the Disaster.”

“And then lived through the whole war as a soldier?” the Nightsister asked with an impressed tone. “Your girl is quite the survivor, Sam Cardell.”

Sam smiled widely. “That she is...”

And of course Sam would never take credit for Cara’s resilience and strength that she’d obviously needed to survive the war, but a part of her couldn’t help but think that Merrin had been even more right than she realized in their long ago conversation. Telling her story, telling _their_ story, had kept it and Cara alive. It wasn’t clear how that story was going to continue in the near future, but that didn’t matter right now.

All that mattered was that it wasn’t over.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And with this I'm basically out of ideas to write (on this or anything else), so if anybody's got prompts or suggestions please share! (catch me on tumblr @chippingthegoalkeeper)


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